“We had characters, then”

As told to me by Judge Dan Grimmer

Not to take away from his considerable legal abilities, but I have always thought of Dan Grimmer as a raconteur, first and foremost. A life-long Fremont resident (Grimmer Blvd. is named after a family member, although I don’t remember if it was his father or his grandfather), he was not only a well-known local attorney before being named to the bench, but was always the hit of any bar function because he could tell the old war stories better than anyone.

All of his stories were hilarious, but some were cruelly hilarious and I can’t publish those here because the worst of them involve judges who are now retired, but still alive. But the attorneys ate them up because even when they weren’t completely true (although most of them were), they easily could have been.

Judge Grimmer recently agreed to sit down with me and spin some yarns while I recorded. The first two stories involve Roy Pucci, a Municipal Court judge who was famously hard of hearing, a condition caused by artillery fire when he was part of the second wave to hit the beaches at Iwo Jima. Despite the heroic cause of his deafness, he was an easy target for humor, and attorneys never missed a chance.

The first story isn’t true, but I include it here because Grimmer told it so well.

*


Judge Pucci was getting ready to sentence a criminal defendant and asked, “Does the defendant have anything to say before I pass sentence?”

“Not a Goddamned thing,” muttered the defendant.

“What’s that?” asked Judge Pucci. “What did the defendant say?”

“ ‘Not a Goddamned thing, your honor,’ ” yelled the court clerk.

“That’s funny,” said Pucci. “I could have sworn I saw his lips move.”

*

Judge Grimmer swears that the rest of these stories are true.


*

We used to have a thing called “Project Intercept” that was for first-time petty theft offenders. You had to be screened first [before being admitted to the program] and the screening process was to find out if it really was your first-time offense.

There was this cute little girl from Project Intercept who used to appear in Roy Pucci’s court and the standard line from the bench would be “You’ve been referred to Project Intercept. What does Project Intercept say?” And she would say, “Well, we’ve screened him and found him acceptable.”

Roy was on the bench one day and I was sitting in the front row where the attorneys sit and [long-time local attorney] Allan Gorelick was sitting next to me. And the girl from Project Intercept said about the defendant, “We’ve screened him and found him acceptable.”

Roy said, “What’d she say?” and Al Gorelick said, “We screwed him and found him acceptable, your honor.”

“Oh, okay.”

*

The next few stories involve legendary Judge Thomas Lester Foley, about whom I have written briefly before.

*

Most of the stories I know about T.L. Foley are from when he was retired and he sat on assignment in the Fremont Court when one of the judges was on vacation. In those days those departments did everything. They did traffic, they did jury trials, they did unlawful detainers – all in the same day.

So T.L. was sitting in Fremont one day and I had two clients in front of him. It seems the City of Fremont had recently passed an anti-cruising ordinance covering Fremont Boulevard, which made it illegal to park in certain places after a certain time. These two fellows had gotten off work, they’d gone down to a local hamburger stand, got their hamburgers and pulled off to the side of the street to eat their hamburgers. They weren’t cruising at all. And the sign that prohibited them from being there was covered by a tree so they couldn’t see it from where they parked. A cop came along and wrote them a citation. It was something like a $170 citation, which in 1978 – or thereabouts – was a hell of a lot of money. So they came to me and said “What can we do?” and I said, “Well, you know, I’m not going to charge you anything, but we’re going to have some fun with this.”

When I went into court, I said “I want to set this for a jury trial.” So they set it for a jury trial when T.L. was there.

Jury trial? Wasn’t this just an ordinary traffic ticket? An infraction? Why a jury trial?

This was a city ordinance, so it was a misdemeanor and therefore entitled to a jury trial.

In those days, when they would call the jury trials, all the attorneys and the District Attorney – in this case, the District Attorney was Leon Mezzetti – would go into chambers and they’d start going through the cases: you know, which ones are ready to go and stuff like that; and it finally came to me and the judge said, “What do you have, Grimmer?” and I said “I have this violation of a city ordinance, anti-cruising, parking in an illegal area; it’s a misdemeanor and I demand a jury trial.”

T.L. looked at me and said, “There’s no way in hell I’m going to go to a jury trial on a case like that.” And he looked at Mezzetti and said, “Mezzetti, you give him whatever he wants and get rid of this case.”

So Mezzetti said, “I’ll tell you what. You go and look in the Vehicle Code and find something that’s a non-moving violation and I’ll go along with it.” When the clerk called our case later, we had found a statute and I said, “Your honor, we’re going to plead to Vehicle Code such-and-such.”

T.L. said, “What’s that? I’m not familiar with that.” And Mezzetti said “That’s parking in a snow zone. And it’s been agreed that the fine will be $50 each.”

“Fine.”

I ended up paying the fine for both of them. But, you know, T.L. just didn’t blush. “Fine. I don’t care, I’ll go along with anything.” But I’ll guarantee you they were the only persons who have ever been convicted of parking in a snow zone in Fremont, California.

*

When he was sitting in that same department — this was Department 2 of the old Fremont Court – he was doing traffic. And I think we were waiting for him to finish his traffic trials. And Lisa Faria was there; she was the D.A. This was back when the D.A. used to put on the traffic trials. [For many years now, traffic trials are strictly between the citing officer and the defendant. No District Attorney.]

So Mezzetti had this officer from Newark testifying and he said, “I’m sitting using my such-and-such radar unit at such-and-such a place…” and T.L. stopped him and said, “You’re using a radar gun?” “Yes.” “Are you still doing traffic?” “Yes.” “Are you still using the radar gun?” “Yes.” “Are you using it today?” The officer said, “Well as a matter of fact, I am.” “Do you know where you’re going to be about 1:30 today?” “Well, yeah, I know approximately where I’m going to be parked. Why, your honor?”

“Well, I’ll tell you. I just bought me a new fuzz-buster and I want to see if it works.”

This was in open court! And T.L. looked at Lisa and said, “Lisa, here’s what we’re gonna do. When we finish here, I’m gonna take you out to lunch and then you and I are gonna go see if my fuzz-buster works.” And this was the only time I remember that Lisa couldn’t say a word.

It turned out that T.L.’s wife was in a convalescent home run by, I think it was the Mormons, and she was in a home for Alzheimer’s patients in Salt Lake City. So he would routinely get in his Cadillac and drive to Salt Lake City over the weekend. He’d be driving on I-80, and they use radar on the freeways there and that’s why he bought himself a fuzz-buster: to make sure that he didn’t get caught.

*

But probably the best story about T.L. that I know is this: In those days, all of the court appointments [for attorneys to represent indigent defendants] for misdemeanors were handed out by the judges. So the clerk would call you up and say, “You want this appointment?”

So it seems there was a big fight in this particular neighborhood. The cops came to break up a loud party and it turned out to be a drunken brawl with the partygoers fighting the cops. And people were arrested for drunk in public, resisting arrest, battery on a police officer, and the whole nine yards. Seven defendants, charged with one complaint. And all of them pleaded not guilty.

Now, there was no way they could try this in the Fremont courtroom, so they made a courtroom out of the auditorium at the Niles Veteran Hall, which is right across the street from where I grew up. They set up a jury box with folding chairs and set up folding tables for the counsel tables. And they brought in T.L. specifically to try this case.

Mezzetti was the D.A. on this case too and I had two of the defendants. I represented one as a court-appointed attorney and another one as private counsel. He couldn’t qualify for a Public Defender or a court-appointed attorney because he had a job. You couldn’t represent two defendants in the same trial today because of conflict of interest.

So in the process of voir dire [questioning potential jury members to see if they are acceptable], this one lady was being questioned – I think her name was Ferrari. And T.L. said, “Oh, it’s you, Mrs. Ferrari, isn’t it?”

“Mrs. Ferarri, don’t you own the liquor store at the corner of such-and-such?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And is it going to be a hardship on you and your husband for you to serve on this jury?”

“Well, it is going to be somewhat of a hardship.”

“Oh, and by the way, don’t you have one of the greatest wine collections in the whole area down in the basement of your liquor store?”

“Well, yes, we do.”

“Now, you serve liquor there. Do you think you might be prejudiced in favor of these people because they’re accused of being drunk?”

“Oh, I don’t know, your honor.”

So T.L. said, “Would one of you attorneys down there feel that maybe you should be exercising one of your challenges – probably not for cause, but one of your [limited] peremptory challenges because there’s some real problems with this?

“Grimmer, what about YOU?”

Well, what do you say? “Challenge, your honor.”

*

I told him the story about my retired partner, B.G. Moore, and Foley at the six-martini lunch, after which Foley reamed B.G. a new one in open court.

Absolutely. That’s exactly correct. And I had that experience, showing up one time for an afternoon pre-trial, and Foley was absolutely smashed. Absolutely smashed.

And you really didn’t know how to act. You’re just a young pup, you know, and you don’t know whether you’re going to talk to him in a very simple manner trying to explain what’s going on or you’re going to talk legalese to him or what.

But…if you didn’t show him respect when he passed gas, he would ream you right there on the spot. Nobody would stop him. I mean there was no such thing as the Commission on Judicial Performance, otherwise he would have had all kinds of problems.

I wrote a piece in my blog about how “favors were done…” of the kind you just can’t do today. Dismissing traffic tickets and the like.

Favors were done.

I went to see Bob [now-retired Judge Robert K., also known as “Bye-Bye”] Byers one time on Christmas Eve. A client had paid to have me to go and talk to Judge Byers about letting her son out for Christmas. The guy had served about 90 days on a 180-day sentence. And Byers was actually there working on Christmas Eve.

So we called the DA up. And Byers just lit into me. He gave me, “Do you think I should let this guy out so he can be with his family on Christmas Day and then have him embarrass me by not coming back? You’re coming in here on Christmas Eve and you think you can work on my sympathy?”

This is all in chambers, and the District Attorney isn’t saying a word.

“What kind of guy do you think I am that Christmas Eve could change the way I do business?

“…But I’ll let him out.”

*

You know what? That’s history that you just don’t have nowadays. It just couldn’t occur today.

I was talking to [Judge] George Hernandez today and told him what I was going to do and he said, “You know, that’s great. That’s something that we’ve lost here. We had a whole history of characters in the legal community here and as we’ve become more sophisticated, as we’ve become more – what’s the word – “urbanized,” we’ve lost all of that. We used to be able to tell these stories. Now you say “T.L. Foley” to somebody and they wouldn’t know who you were talking about.

Like Norma Desmond said in Sunset Blvd., “We had faces then.” Only in this context it’s “We had characters then.”

We had characters then. That’s exactly right.