Judges and Judiciary
Aug. 14, 2002
Cream Rising To the Top
OAKLAND - Judge Steven A Brick has some succinct advice for attorneys who appear in his courtroom: "Have a very good idea of what you're trying to accomplish and how you plan to get there," the fast-rising Alameda County Superior Court jurist said recently. "Make progress that day, [don't] just mark time that day."
Steven A. Brick
Judge, Alameda County Superior Court
Career Highlights: Appointed by Gov. Gray Davis, Nov. 28, 2000; sworn in, Jan. 4, 2001; attorney, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, San Francisco, 1973-2000; President, Bar Association of San Francisco, 1990-91.
Law School: Boalt Hall, 1972
Age: 55
"Have a very good idea of what you're trying to accomplish and how you plan to get there," the fast-rising Alameda County Superior Court jurist said recently. "Make progress that day, [don't] just mark time that day."
It's guidance Brick has perhaps taken himself. It would certainly apply to some of the defendants who appear before him in his courtroom, part of a stream of damaged and damaging people that inner cities seem capable of producing in endless quantity.
"You need to get your life together - get a job, get a place to live," he admonished one man in a blue jail jump suit who had offered many excuses for failing to take part in court-ordered anger management classes. Brick, before releasing him on his own recognizance, sternly warned the man he could face a year in jail if he persisted in missing the classes.
"You yell at them when they do bad; you praise them when they do good," Brick said later in a reflective moment. "That's what you do here. It's like what you do with your kids."
The job is a far cry from Brick's former occupation as a big-city litigator at San Francisco's Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, where he spent 28 years, many of them in management positions.
At the same time, Brick was active in the Bar Association of San Francisco, becoming president of the organization during the 1990-91 term. Stints in leading positions in a number of other professional organizations, including the Association of Business Trial Lawyers of Northern California, the Judicial Conference for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the State Bar, among others, also stand out in his densely packed résumé.
Since his appointment to the Alameda County bench, Brick has continued racking up accomplishments.
Sworn into office in January 2001, by early this year Brick was sitting on a court panel instituting a new program to manage all the court's civil cases. That meant developing ways to systematically process thousands of small lawsuits that had not been subject to the same handling as larger actions.
"For us, it was a big change," said Presiding Judge Harry Sheppard, who praised Brick as one of the team that got the system up and running in the first half of 2002.
"Since we have so many judges whose background is in criminal litigation, his background in civil is just invaluable in getting ready for this onslaught," said Superior Court Judge Allan Hymer, who supervises judges in Oakland's Wiley Manuel Courthouse, where Brick will work until Sept. 30.
He will then move to the civil law and motion department in Hayward, completing a relatively rapid rise from handling misdemeanor criminal matters to the more prestigious civil trial courts.
Brick thus becomes one of the first beneficiaries on the Alameda bench of the state-mandated end to making judicial assignments based strictly on seniority. Alameda County reportedly had been under some pressure from the governor's office to show that it was ending the strict seniority system that it had adopted in 1998.
Sheppard, who also has assigned to Brick a handful of civil cases that would not usually be assigned to a criminal courts judge, insisted he had no intention of making an example of Brick.
"I wasn't trying to make any kind of point with it," Sheppard said. "He was obviously a well-qualified candidate."
But Sheppard acknowledged that elevating Brick rapidly was made easier by the change in rules, which eliminated seniority as the sole factor in assigning judges.
"Of the newest judges, he went to the law and motion department because he had the skill set," Sheppard said, noting that "years back, that would not have been the case."
Brick has also gotten positive reviews from attorneys who have appeared in his court. Respondents to the Alameda County Bar Association's anonymous judicial evaluation survey released in July ranked Brick either excellent or good in almost every category, including preparation, knowledge of the law and his grasp of the issues.
Brick's quick rise was noted approvingly by Justice Stuart Pollak, a member of the California Court of Appeal and a longtime friend of Brick's. Pollak, who issued the oath of office to Brick, spoke briefly at the induction ceremony about his occasional bridge partner's qualifications for the job.
"I had a credo of what I thought was a good judge," Pollak said. "I thought he fit every one of those characteristics," including patience, thoughtfulness, courtesy and, most importantly, "not letting the position go to your head."
Another longtime Brick supporter, Jerome Falk, of San Francisco's Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin, spotted Brick nearly three decades ago. Partly on the strength of a law review article Brick had written as a student, Falk involved Brick in a U.S. Supreme Court appeal of a case that would determine the right of people to represent themselves without attorneys.
The result: In 1975, barely three years after becoming a lawyer, Brick was part of a legal team that won a landmark Supreme Court decision. Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806, established that mentally sound criminal defendants had the right to represent themselves in court.
Among the memorable aspects of the ruling was an acidic dissent by Justice Harry Blackmun.
"If there is any truth to the old proverb that 'one who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client,'" Blackmun wrote, "the court by its opinion today now bestows a constitutional right on one to make a fool of himself."
Brick said recently that he did not remember the Blackmun passage. But Brick said he does try to dissuade defendants in his courtroom from representing themselves.
Ironic?
"Oh, certainly," he said.
Impressed, Howard Rice, in the persons of Falk and then-attorney Pollak, attempted to persuade Brick over lunch to join the firm. He declined, referring them instead to his wife, Ann, who ultimately did join Howard Rice.
Despite the rebuff, Falk and both Bricks maintained a friendship over the years. At times, Steven Brick and Falk would cooperate on cases, even while at different firms.
"It's a delight to work with someone that smart," Falk reflected recently. "You can communicate at high speed."
When it comes to communication now, Brick frequently finds himself talking with the prosecutors and public defenders who appear before him. Many are not far removed from law school.
Brick occasionally finds himself schooling young lawyers on the fine art of courtroom presentation.
In one recent drunken driving case, the prosecutor, a second-year law student being supervised by the district attorney's office, attempted to show the jury an enlarged map of the street location where the incident allegedly took place. Brick gently broke in to remind the young woman that the map had not been entered into evidence.
After trials, Brick often finds himself meeting with the lawyers in the case, offering assessments of their performance. At the same time, he tries to educate himself through questionnaires he sends to jurors, asking them for their impressions of the job done by everyone in the case, from the court staff to the lawyers.
During trials, Brick keeps a double set of notes on the action in his courtroom. Down one side of the pad he'll jot reminders to himself of substantive legal issues in the case that require his attention and on the other side he keeps descriptions of what he calls the "performance part" of the proceedings. Those he might later use in his talks with the lawyers.
"I tell them what I thought they did that was good and what I thought could have been done better or differently," he said of his post-mortem meetings with the attorneys.
Brick not only notices the behavior of the lawyers in his courtroom, he also scrutinizes their arguments, said one defense attorney who has appeared before him.
"He reads everything," said Tali Levi, an Alameda County deputy public defender. "He really reads the briefs; he reads all the cases cited."
His reading load is about to increase as he heads into the civil court system, which appears to be just fine with him. Brick said he has thought about becoming a judge since he clerked for U.S. District Judge Albert C. Wollenberg 30 years ago.
But it was only in more recent years, particularly following the unexpected death of his father, that Brick decided to pursue the goal with more urgency.
"You ought to do what you want to do," Brick said, "because you never know about tomorrow."
Recent cases handled by Brick and the lawyers involved:
• Bell v. Farmers Insurance, C774013
Plaintiffs attorney: Steven Zieff, Rudy, Exelrod & Zieff, San Francisco
Defense attorney: Lee Paterson, Winston & Strawn, Los Angeles
• Burch v. Golden State Overnight Delivery Service, C841302
Plaintiffs attorney: John True III, Leonard Carder Nathan Zuckerman Ross Chin & Remar, Oakland
Defense attorney: Jeremy Millstone, McDonough, Holland & Allen, Sacramento
• People v. McCray, 461498
District attorney's office: Kevin Wong
Public defender's office: Kellie Blumin
• People v. Thomson, 453523
District attorney's office: Mechelle Corriero
Public defender's office: Jenny Andrews
• People v. Miller, 463479
District attorney's office: Dionne Choyce
Public defender's office: Tali Levi
Dennis Pfaff
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