Judges and Judiciary
Jun. 25, 2002
Judge Will Cap Colorful Career
LOS ANGELES - To hear some Los Angeles litigators tell it, Judge Robert M. Letteau has been God's gift to Superior Court. For 20 years, he has put lawyers and litigants at ease with a friendly, attentive judicial style that earned him highest honors from Southern California's two largest trial lawyer groups.
Robert M. Letteau
Superior Court Judge
Los Angeles
Career highlights: Appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown, Los Angeles Superior Court, 1982; associate and partner, Ross Pierson & Letteau, Inglewood, 1968-82; member, Inglewood City Council, 1971-76
Law School: Hastings College of the Law, 1967
Age: 60
For 20 years, he has put lawyers and litigants at ease with a friendly, attentive judicial style that earned him highest honors from Southern California's two largest trial lawyer groups.
However, in his final months at the Santa Monica Courthouse, a campaign of accusations charging him with cronyism, bias and abuse of discretion in probate cases has culminated in a disciplinary action against Letteau by the Commission on Judicial Performance.
On May 14, the commission notified two individuals who had lodged complaints about Letteau's handling of a famous art collector's $250 million estate that "appropriate corrective action" had been taken. The language of the letter means Letteau has been privately disciplined.
Though the discipline was one of the two lightest forms the commission imposes - either an advisory letter or private admonishment - Letteau has been saddened by the 11th-hour blemish on his judicial record.
"You know, I'm a bit thin-skinned about this," Letteau said. "I want everyone to love me, but sometimes that doesn't happen."
Letteau, 60, will retire from the bench in September and go on to part-time private judging and mediation work, community service, travel and a little work on his golf game.
"I took up golf four years ago, and I still stink," he said.
He neglected to mention that he's something of an ace tennis player. He left the state's B-ranked judges in the dust during a California Judges Association tournament in the early 1990s.
By all accounts, Letteau is much better at mediation than he is at golf. Some describe him as "gifted" at bringing parties to settlement.
"He's going to find himself busier off the bench than he was on the bench because everyone in town will be happy, and fortunate, if they can use his services as a mediator or settlement judge," plaintiffs' lawyer Lawrence Grassini said.
"He really does have kind of a unique ability," Grassini added. "I can think of some cases I settled with him that I never thought would settle, cases in which we went in and we were miles apart, and he manages to close the gap and make everybody walk away feeling good about what they did."
Among the alternative dispute resolution firms for whom Letteau will work is Century City-based ADR Services, headed by Lucie Barron. She can't praise Letteau enough.
"I don't want to use the word 'user-friendly,' but he's very personable. He's sincere. He's very business-savvy. He's a leader in mediation for judges on the bench. He set up the mediation program in probate at the downtown court, which was very successful," Barron said.
"He's the greatest," said medical malpractice defense lawyer Gregory G. Lynch at the mention of Letteau's name. "He's someone I'm sure everyone will go to when he begins mediating cases. I'm sure he will be very popular."
Part-time mediation will be a dramatic change of pace for Letteau. Until a couple of months ago, he juggled a docket of 600 general civil cases Monday through Thursday and then, on Fridays, squeezed in all the probate matters for the Superior Court's West District.
His new role as mediation maven will cap a colorful and very public 34-year career as lawyer, politician and judge.
Born in San Francisco, Letteau grew up in Los Angeles, attended the Webb School - a boys' prep school in Claremont noted for its paleontology museum and field digs - and attended Stanford University in Palo Alto for his undergraduate degree in English. Letteau stayed in the Bay Area to study law at Hastings College of the Law but returned to the Southland after earning his law degree in 1967.
Fresh out of law school, he joined a small general civil litigation firm in Inglewood, and he stayed with that firm, which became Ross, Pierson & Letteau, until Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him to the bench 14 years later.
Letteau and his partners became involved in local politics. From 1971 to 1976, Letteau served on Inglewood's City Council, redevelopment agency and housing authority. His partner, David Pierson, became a state assemblyman.
Another partner, Edward M. Ross, was appointed to the Municipal Court in 1979 and Los Angeles Superior Court in 1982. Ross also served as supervising judge of probate court from 1991 to 1993, immediately before Letteau was assigned to that post.
Letteau was appointed to the Superior Court in January 1982. He was assigned to a Van Nuys courtroom, where he tried civil cases for 12 years. He also served as the supervising judge of the Van Nuys court from 1993 to 1994 before moving to the Central Civil Courthouse in Los Angeles as supervising judge of the probate department from 1995 to 1996. He was reassigned to the Santa Monica Courthouse in 1997 to handle unlimited jurisdiction cases, and once there, he volunteered to handle the West District's probate, as well.
During his years at Van Nuys, Letteau earned his reputation as a judge who would show attorneys respect and let them put on their cases.
"The guy is truly a superstar - in everything," said plaintiffs' attorney Tom Girardeau of Girardeau & Ekes. "He has the ability to treat all lawyers with the greatest respect. He also has the best finesse to show lawyers, especially in settlement, the errors of their ways. There was always an axiom that, if everybody is upset with the settlement, it's a good settlement. Judge Letteau has proven that, if everybody is happy with the settlement, it is a good settlement. This is a very difficult thing to do day after day."
In 1985, the Los Angeles Trial Lawyers Association (now the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles) named him Trial Judge of the Year. Last year, the Los Angeles chapter of the American Board of Trial Attorneys gave Letteau its Judicial Civility Award for "exemplary promotion of courtroom civility."
Letteau's years on the Santa Monica bench have brought him his most-public exposure. He's presided over a complaint that rock singer Rod Stewart's dog mauled a neighbor's guest, a libel action by O.J. Simpson houseguest Brian "Kato" Kalin against the Globe tabloid, and an attempt to give to Los Angeles Superior Court the jurisdiction over claims against the Ferdinand Marcos estate for funds the deposed Filipino dictator allegedly stole from the country and its taxpayers.
He even earned a credit on Fox Television's big '90s hit, "Melrose Place," when his courtroom and nameplate were used in an episode.
While supervising judge of the probate department from 1995 to 1996, Letteau launched a mediation panel that handled 600 cases in its first two years, 75 percent of which settled, said Kenneth S. Wolf, of-counsel to the Westwood firm of Hoffman, Sabban & Watenmaker. Wolf serves on the panel.
Before Letteau became presiding judge, challenged wills, troublesome trust interpretations and other contested probate matters went to court commissioners for voluntary settlement conferences, Wolf said.
"There was nothing voluntary about them, nor was there much in the way of settlement, either. It was more of an academic exercise, and they would continue again and again, sometimes through four or five of these voluntary settlement conferences," Wolf said.
When Letteau took the reins, he found a backlog of cases that destined most contested matters to a two-year wait for trial. Letteau approached members of the probate bar with his idea for a mandatory mediation program, according to Wolf, assembled a group of willing participants with five or more years of probate practice and oversaw development of a 30-hour mediation training program with emphasis on probate issues.
The panel has 100 members - attorneys, retired judges and nonattorney mediators - and a success rate three times greater than most other areas of mediation, Wolf said.
Commissioner R. Ronald Hauptman, who moved to the probate department in 1998 after the mediation panel was well-established, praised its success as a function of the high caliber of the mediators whom Letteau recruited.
The probate mediation panel has hastened the scheduling of trials in probate.
"What the mediation program has done is shortened the time to get to trial," Wolf said. "In many cases, you are getting to trial in the contested probate cases within six months of filing of the petition. You have a tremendous quickening of the process."
Marshal A. Oldman, partner at the Los Angeles office of Oldman, Cooley, Leighton & Sallus and incoming chair of the State Bar's probate section, said that before Letteau revamped the probate department's unwieldy settlement conference system, he had a case that had been continued 22 times.
"That probably took 21/2 to three years," Oldman said. "Department 1 was not accepting probate trials so, if we couldn't settle, they just got continued.
"I think mediation has been a very successful program. I think it is a much more helpful program than the settlement conferences that the probate department used to have."
In retrospect, however, it is hard to tell whether Letteau made more of a mark on the probate department or it made more of a mark on him.
The Commission on Judicial Performance's private admonishment to Letteau, in the form of a "stinger letter," arose from his handling of a probate fight between trustees for the $250 million estate of Toyota-dealership-king-turned-art-collector Fred Weisman. Weisman, whose first wife was industrialist Norton Simon's sister, died in 1994 after a two-year battle with pancreatic cancer.
Weisman had named a Washington, D.C., lawyer, Coleman Bean, and a Century City accountant, Mitchell Reinschreiber, as trustees for his four major trusts: a family hardship trust; a philanthropic trust; an art foundation trust; and a temporary trust in which his personal and business assets were to be held for liquidation and distribution into the three main trusts and 10 more individual trusts that Weisman had created for his grandchildren and other family members.
As trustees, Reinschreiber and Bean did not work well together, according to Reinschreiber's daughter, Debra Reda. Her father had been Weisman's chief financial officer, accountant and trusted friend for many years - so trusted, in fact, that he had been called to Weisman's side time after time in the last two years of the auto magnate's life to refine provisions of the trusts and will.
Reinschreiber believed he had better knowledge of Weisman's wishes for his legacy than anyone else, but Bean often refused to authorize expenditures that Reinschreiber incurred. The accountant-trustee went to court to have the lawyer-trustee replaced.
"Letteau took one look at this case and said, 'It's mine,'" Reda charged.
Letteau solved the dispute between the two trustees by removing them both on the basis that each had charged the Weisman estate unreasonably high fees for their services.
In their place, Letteau appointed two interim trustees, awarding them trustee stipends of $25,000 per month. One of those, Malcolm G. Smith, served with Letteau on the board of directors of Inglewood Park Cemetery, the burial grounds for many of Los Angeles' most prominent civic leaders of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Letteau's action triggered an avalanche of litigation - some by Reinschreiber, who sought reinstatement as trustee, and some against Reinschreiber, which sought reimbursement of the alleged $10 million he overcharged to the trusts. Ultimately, Reinschreiber was financially ruined by the combination of litigation costs (well more than $1 million, his wife Lynne Reinschreiber estimates) and the sudden loss of his income as accountant for the Weisman businesses and estate trustee ($100,000 a month, according to daughter Reda).
The strain of financial difficulties and defending his honor ultimately cost him his life, Lynne Reinschreiber said. Reinschreiber died in October 1998 from heart and kidney diseases. Soon thereafter, the bank foreclosed on the Reinschreiber's Bel-Air home. Lynne Reinschreiber rented an apartment in Santa Monica.
Since 1998, Lynne Reinschreiber has penned 54 complaint letters to the Commission on Judicial Performance regarding Letteau's handling of the Weisman estate cases.
Lynne Reinschreiber garnered significant media coverage for her side of the story from New Times columnist Jill Stewart. But, in the end, the commission found Letteau at fault only for improperly demanding that Lynne Reinschreiber provide proof of her husband's hospitalization as his excuse for not appearing in court during several proceedings.
"The basis of the criticism was that I did not have jurisdiction," Letteau explained in acknowledging the commission's scolding.
In other words, Lynne Reinschreiber was not a party to the action and, therefore, Letteau should have directed his demands to Reinschreiber's counsel rather than his wife.
"That was a total and complete smear job. It was totally undeserved," said probate litigator Lynn Hinojosa of the West Los Angeles firm of Hinojosa & Khougaz. Hinojosa represented the other interim trustee in the Weisman estate, Michael P. Chmura.
"[Letteau's] a credit to the judiciary," Hinojosa added. "The problem here is ... everybody in that case and that family had axes to grind. Unfortunately, Judge Letteau was trying to do the right things, and he was doing the right things."
Nonetheless, private discipline by the commission can become significant if similar misconduct is complained of in multiple matters.
Probate attorney Marc Hankin also has filed a complaint against Letteau for his handling of another probate matter, Conservatorship of Robert Feist, B149324. In that protracted elder-abuse case, the 2nd District Court of Appeal chastised Letteau in an unpublished December 2001 opinion for abuse of discretion, bias and a "palpable animosity" toward Hankin, whose fees Letteau had cut.
Hankin wrote California's pioneering elder-abuse legislation in 1992, the Elder & Dependent Adult Civil Protection Act, and is known as a passionate - and sometimes combative - advocate for the poor and elderly.
The appellate decision describes a yearlong procedural stalemate during which Hankin accused Letteau of contributing to elder abuse by using his authority to approve attorney fees as a hammer to stifle criticism of probate judges.
Probate attorneys make up a relatively small segment of Los Angeles' bar - 988, by Los Angeles County Bar Association's last count of its cg Trusts and Estates membership - to handle all the matters before just three probate judges and one commissioner.
By contrast, 2,450 of the county bar's members are in the litigation section, but they can take their chances before 172 judges and seven commissioners assigned to civil cases.
(Letteau also named Ross a referee in the case despite the fact that Ross was the only judge whom Hankin had objected to by name in that capacity.)
"Hankin contends on appeal that the trial court abuses its discretion by failing to provide a reasoned basis for the amount of the fee award, that the award bears no rational relation to the services reasonably rendered, and that the trial court was demonstrably biased against him. We agree," Justice Charles S. Vogel wrote in the decision.
Though the case was remanded to Judge Thomas Stoever for further action on Dec. 27, 2001, none has been taken.
The Commission on Judicial Performance will not impose discipline on a complaint until after the matter from which it arises has closed.
"Some judges are mature adults; you can treat them like colleagues. [They make] the decision, but you are colleagues; you don't have to kiss [their] butt. [With] Letteau, you have to genuflect," the attorney said.
"I'm not going to get in a pissing match over Hankin," Letteau responded. "I treated Hankin as fairly as I could. It doesn't mean I'm going to roll over and give him all the fees that he asked for."
Letteau added, "If I think the service justifies the fees being sought, I award them. I think generally the probate bar thought I was fair in awarding fees.
"You deal with so many people; you make a call and you go on."
Here are some of Judge Letteau's recent or significant cases and the lawyers involved:
• Bendik v. Crossroads School, SC041043
Plaintiff: Fierstein & Sturman; Freeman & Smiley; Ronald M. Papell, Los Angeles
Defendant: Haight, Brown & Bonesteel, Los Angeles; Richard A. Stone, Beverly Hills
• Reinschreiber v. The Frederick R. Weisman Co., BP033738
Plaintiff: Gina M. Calvelli, Riordan & McKinzie, Los Angeles; Roy Weatherup, Haight Brown & Bonesteel
Defendants: Robert N. Sacks, Ross Sacks & Glazier, Los Angeles; Lynnard C. Hinojosa, Hinojosa & Khougas, Los Angeles
• Miguel Gonzales v. Southern California Edison, SC048813
Plaintiff: William Cleary, Los Angeles; Alejandro Murguia, San Bernardino
Defendants: Gibeaut, Mahan & Briscoe, Los Angeles; Hines, Redd, Gonzales, Diktonot, Cardoza, Los Angeles; Lewis, D'Amato, Brisbois & Bisgaard, Los Angeles
• Kessell v. Leavitt, SS006478
Plaintiff: Brian L. Dobrin and Debora R. Bonner, Dobrin & Bonner, Los Angeles
Defendant: James. L. Pocrass, Santa Monica
• Foxgate Homeowners Association. v. Bramalea California, SC024139
Plaintiffs: Perlstein & Robbins, Los Angeles; Steiner & Libo, Beverly Hills; Ward Gaunt & Raskin, Torrance
Defendants: Cooksey Toolen Gage Duffy & Woog, Costa Mesa; Drummy King & White, Costa Mesa; Koletsky Mancini Feldman & Morrow, Los Angeles; Seifert Farricker & Gilman, Brea; Wood Smith Henning & Berman, Los Angeles
Defendants/Cross-Complainants: Green & Adams, Irvine; Kirtland & Packard, Los Angeles; Murtaugh Miller Meyer & Nelson, Irvine; Ivan K. Stevenson, Rolling Hills Estates
Defendants/Cross-Defendants: Murchison & Cumming, Los Angeles; Waters McCluskey & Boehle, Los Angeles
Defendant/Cross-Defendant/Cross-Complainant: Ivan K. Stevenson, Rolling Hills Estates
Cross-Defendants: Robert Parker Mills, Bacon & Mills, Los Angeles; Jeffrey H. Baraban, Baraban & Teske, Pasadena; Keith G. Bremer, Bremer & Whyte, Newport Beach; Marla B. Shah, Chapman Glucksman & Dean, Los Angeles; Collins Collins Muir & Traver, Los Angeles; Dale Braden & Hinchcliffe, Los Angeles; Demler, Armstrong & Rowland, Long Beach; John P. Donovan, Irvine; Keller Price & Moorhead, Redondo Beach; Koester & Beavers, Anaheim; Kolod Wager & Gordon, Escondido; Lewis D'Amato Brisbois & Bisgaard, Los Angeles; Linda M. Libertucci, Orange; Morris Polich & Purdy, Los Angeles; Cynthia Coulter Mulvihill, Pasadena; Anthony R. Milani, Milani & Associates, Irvine; William M. Molfetta, Molfetta & Associates, Glendale; Murtaugh Miller Meyer & Nelson, Irvine; Norby & Brodeur, Torrance; Neal Haushalter O'Neill & Ray, Santa Ana; Perlstein & Robbins, Los Angeles; Schaffer Lax McNaughton & Chen, Los Angeles; Veatch Carlson Grogan & Nelson, Los Angeles; Wallsworth Franklin Bevins & McCall, San Bernardino;
Cross-Defendants/Cross-Complainants: McCormick, Siepler & Baker, Glendale
Ed Kimble
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