Judges opt for private, lucrative arbitration posts

Friday January 31, 2003

By DAVID KRAVETS
AP Legal Affairs Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Citing new conflict of interest rules, more than one-fourth of California's retired judges who sit by assignment on public trials have bowed out of the paid, voluntary program, court officials announced Friday.

Of the 367 retired judges who presided over civil and criminal cases last year, 268 have agreed to continue participating in the program that pays $513 per day, the state's Administrative Office of the Courts said.

The decline in the pool of retired judges used to alleviate court crowding is in response to new rules that forbid those jurists from also working as private arbitrators and mediators lucrative positions paying as much as $500 or more hourly to resolve disputes out of court.

With California's courtrooms becoming increasingly clogged because of unfilled judgeships and budget cuts, private judging has blossomed into big business. Many legal journals advertise the private judging services of retired judges.

Aggrieved parties seeking quicker resolution to their disputes are moving to private mediation and arbitration, and many of today's employment and business agreements demand out-of-court arbitration to resolve conflicts.

Ronald George, chief justice of the California Supreme Court, announced the conflict-of-interest rules in June. The announcement required retired judges to choose, by Friday, whether to work publicly or privately.

The state sent the retired judges letters July 6, saying the change was to ensure that retired judges ``foster the preservation of the independence and impartiality of the judiciary, and to the greatest extent possible, avoid conflicts of interest.''

At that time, George said publicly that the intent of the new policy was ``to avoid any public perception of a potential conflict of interest created by a judge sitting on assignment in the public courts and concurrently providing private services to litigants for a fee.''

Retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Isabel Cohen said Friday she would no longer work as a paid public judge. She can earn substantially more privately judging, she said.

``It's far more remunerative,'' Cohen said.

In fiscal year 2002, retired judges sat for a combined 32,600 court days, the equivalent of 130 judgeships.

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Editors: David Kravets has been covering state and federal courts for a decade.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)