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The Column That Defined a Legal Generation: Justice William W. Bedsworth, Part II · Coopers' Code

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Life takes a long time. You have plenty of time to make
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mistakes. I went to AD as office.
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I was not cut out for that work. I know lots of law students I
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taught law school for a while who are talking to people who
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know exactly what they're going to do with their career and it
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scares them, but they don't know what they want to do.
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I didn't know what I wanted to do until I dropped out of law
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school and talked to that guy, went back and took those extra
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cases. And when I came out, I really
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didn't know what I wanted to do because that's how I ended up in
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DA's office that I was totally unsuited for.
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One of the best lawyers I ever ran up against.
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Spent the 1st 12 years after college as a forest Ranger and
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so he comes to war at 30 and he practices for 30 years for
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crying out loud. You have a long time to do this.
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You have a long time to figure out what works for you.
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Don't panic if wherever you are right now it isn't working for
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you, just keep looking. Howdy.
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And welcome to the show. Cooper's Code focuses on legal
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issues and notable practitioners, distilling wisdom
1:20
so we all achieve the best results for our clients.
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I'm Miles Cooper and I'm thrilled to share the Part 2 of
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this conversation with Justice William Bettsworth.
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I am pivoting to your appointment to the Appellate
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court and, and as I understand it, you were appointed by
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Governor Pete Wilson. Yes, I was.
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As I understand it, you also had one of the early Seminole
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opinions in the area of LGBTQ rights.
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I was never in the same room with Pete Wilson.
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I've always felt that I was appointed by his appointment
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secretary, whom I saw and had a lovely interview with and then
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saw again and had a wonderful conversation with, who asked to
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read my book, with whom I talked baseball.
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He and I frankly just really hit it off and became good friends.
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If Pete Wilson had talked to me about my social views, I'm not
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sure I ever would have gotten to the bench.
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I was unhappy with a lot of the things that Pete Wilson did.
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But you have to remember, this was 27 years ago.
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Being a Republican then was quite different than being a
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Republican now. And I was a Republican in large
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measure because I could never figure out whether I was a
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liberal Republican or a conservative Democrat.
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And I didn't think it made any difference because both parties
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despised that wing of their party and gave them no attention
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whatsoever. The Democrats didn't wave the
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flag enough for me. I had been a Democrat.
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I became a Republican, I'm a Democratic, and now my middle of
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the road politics had always been a problem for me.
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When Jerry Brown was the governor of the first time, I
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applied for an appointment to the Municipal Court.
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And for the younger listeners, the court system, the trial
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system, used to be divided into two parts.
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And the Municipal Court tried lesser matters, DUI, small civil
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cases, petty thefts, things like that.
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That's where young lawyers started learning their trade
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when I was coming up. So I was ADA for 12 years or so
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and decided I wanted an appointment to the bench.
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And I tried to get an appointment from Jerry Brown,
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and he thought I was way too conservative.
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He left office and George Dukemejian came in, a very
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conservative Republican, and I got as far as the appointment.
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Secretary Marvin Baxter, who later became a Supreme Court
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Justice, got into a long debate with Marvin about the Second
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Amendment. No one had warned me how
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strongly Marvin felt about the Second Amendment, and I felt
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equally strongly, but in the opposite direction.
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And it doesn't help you get appointed if you get into an
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argument with the appointment secretary.
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But at any rate, they said, OK, this is a bearded Berkeley
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Democrat. We aren't interested in this
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guy. So I had now been rejected by
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both parties. And I decided, OK, Eisenhower
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was right. Eisenhower came back from World
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War 2. Both parties wanted him to be
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their candidate for the presidency.
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And he went back and forth trying to figure out what to do.
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And at one point, in exasperation, he said people who
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walk down the middle of the road get hit by trucks.
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His middle of the road politics weren't comfortable for for him
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with either party. My middle of the road politics
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weren't going to get me anywhere.
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So I ran for office. There was an empty seat.
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California has this wonderful system where a judge can time
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his resignation, retirement so that the seat can't be filled by
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the governor. So there are always seats
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available. I ran for an empty seat.
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I was a deputy District Attorney with an Anglo-Saxon name in a
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conservative county. And I got elected and 10 years
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later, I applied for the Court of Appeal.
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And I, I think I was everybody's second choice in trying to
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figure out, OK, this guy's first choice, but he's fifth choice
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over here. This woman is second choice, but
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she's eighth choice over there. This guy is consistently second
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choice. I got to the Court of Appeal.
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By that time, I'd been writing the column for 20 years and I
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was known as a writer. I had written cases.
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I'd handled cases in the US and California Supreme Court and
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everybody said, well, this guy writes all the time, a Court of
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Appeal would be a perfect place for him.
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Anyway, so I got the appointment and it was my dream job.
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I told people for years, this is the best job in the system.
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And I don't mean the legal system, I mean the solar system.
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I just love doing that job. That's why I stayed so long. 27
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years. Good heavens.
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This is the first time that your column has come up in our
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conversation. And I know that a lot of people
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may know you from that, just given how prodigious a writer
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you were. And it's a little bit of a
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tangent, but I'd like to go down that path for for a few minutes
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to tell us how you got to do that, what the focus was and and
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why you got known for being so irreverent.
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The right kind of humor. Cheeky.
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Yeah, that's the one I'm going to grab onto because I'm afraid
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of what other adjectives you might come up with for my stuff.
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I need to laugh. As a child, that was a very
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important thing to me. I've had jobs where you don't
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get to laugh. I was a a prosecutor.
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You're talking about putting people in prison.
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You're taking away their rights. You're sending them off to jail.
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You're dealing with people who have been raped, robbed, what
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have you. There's not much room for
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laughter in that job. I was a spirit Court judge
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again. You know, I told you how I
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opened court because I needed to have that time.
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You get to the Court of Appeal. Nobody wants to read.
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Your $6 million judgment is reversed.
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But did you hear the one about the nun and the parrot and the
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sailor? I needed an outlet.
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I was sitting in Court One day when a lawyer from Los Angeles
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told the judge he wanted to make an oral traverse of the search
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warrant. A traverse is just a challenge
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of the search warrant. He wanted to do it orally,
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meaning he didn't want a separate hearing.
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He just meant to bring this up in whatever court he was
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assigned to. And I turned to the guy next to
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me and I said oral traverse. Isn't that the the evangelist in
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Oklahoma? And, and he said, no, no, no, an
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oral traverse is a very expensive dental procedure.
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He says, oh God, cost an arm and a leg if you need an oral
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traverse. And we began joking about what
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an oral traverse was. My case got continued.
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I went back to my office and I sat down and wrote the
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California Criminal Law Specialist and Screen Door
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Repairman's examination. And I sent it off to the
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California Bar Journal, not knowing they had never published
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humor. And they said, no, we don't
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publish humor. And two weeks later, I got a
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phone call and I saying, you know, we've reconsidered.
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We want to publish your piece, your humor piece.
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It was a 25 question, multiple choice question test.
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We just need to make sure that some of the people who are named
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aren't going to be offended and all this stuff.
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And, and they ran it and the editor of the Orange County Bar
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Journal then contacted me and said, hey, would you like to do
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a, a monthly humor column for our publication?
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And I said, sure, anybody who reads the advance sheets is
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going to have no trouble finding stuff.
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It's crazy. That was 44 years ago.
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I have been doing that column for 44 years.
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It's been showing up in the recorder for 20 or 25 for those
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years because one of their editors stumbled onto it and
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said, hey, this is, this is funny.
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Let's let's run this. And so it's now runs in the
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Recorder. I love to say that it's
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nationally syndicated because there are 17 trade publications,
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financial newspapers or legal newspapers that run it.
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And nationally syndicated sounds so big deal.
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It's this little niche audience. But in 2019, the California
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Newspaper Publishers Association named it the best newspaper
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column in California. They have a contest every year.
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They bring in journalism professors and editors from
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outside the state. They give them three samples of
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your work. And they chose mine.
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That the second place guy was a guy from the LA Times that I was
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a big fan of. Well, you can imagine how much
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that meant to me. And I, I still do it.
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There's a a line at the bottom of each column that says that I
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do it to get it out of my system.
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And that's exactly what it is. I just need to have some fun and
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this is my outlet. So when I think back on, you
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know, noted columnist, you know, Herb Kane is one from the Bay
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Area. I was a big Hurb Kane fan.
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I lived in the Bay Area for three years during law school
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and loved Herb Kane. I don't know that he did that
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for 44 years and and so this is a lead up to a question, which
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is where do you find inspiration?
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How do you find new material? What is it that helps you stay
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fresh with this? Yeah, I, I get this a lot, you
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know, where you find the stuff. And now that it's nationally
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syndicated, it's a little easier because people send me stuff.
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They say here, here's here's a funny thing.
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I got to admit. Some of the things that people
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think are funny are just mean and cruel.
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I just, I like, I think I can't be funny about that.
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My God, three people drowned in that, you know, But I look at
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the paper and I see things and I just, I want to know more about
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them. There was a headline I wrote a
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column recently about a headline in the LA Times said woman in
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Raiders gear steals police car. And I started reading the the
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story and it turned out this woman had been arrested,
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handcuffed and somehow escaped, stole the police car.
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And I'm picturing a woman in Raiders gear and I'm thinking,
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you know, how can you not find this funny?
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How can you not start making up a back story that fits all this
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and trying to figure out how in the world this happened.
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And that's just the way my mind works.
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And I I can get one of those out of my system every month now.
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I would have trouble doing two or three.
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I've had editors who wanted to pay me more to do two or three,
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and I told him I just can't do two or three.
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I certainly couldn't do two or three when I had a day job.
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And now I just, there just isn't that much stuff.
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These are difficult times. It's harder to be funny in these
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times, and the Internet makes it harder because so many of the
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jokes that you think up have circulated to millions of
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people. I don't know how anybody does
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stand up comedy anymore. I find stuff on the Internet
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that makes me laugh all the time, but I need to do it.
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My childhood left me in need of this kind of experience, and I
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need to get it out of my system. I will keep doing it until they
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make me stop. That feels like the opening for
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a question about your childhood and what was it?
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They've made it so that you had this need.
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Oh dear. To understand me, you have to
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understand that I won the birth lottery.
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I had a very unusual set of parents.
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I would say unique, but the world is so big that I'm sure
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that that is the wrong word. My mother was the daughter of a
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wealthy dairy chemist. She grew up with servants and
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Symphony musicians teaching her to play the piano.
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Grandpa apparently was very important in the war effort.
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He did something with milk that enabled them to improve the
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quality of the nutrition of the GIS.
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And he was a big deal. He was a member of the Cosmos
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Club, which has had three presidents and a bunch of
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Nobel's and Pulitzers. And it's it's still a big deal
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in Washington, DC. Mom grew up in Georgetown, had a
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degree in microbiology at a time when women weren't even going to
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college, much less studying what was then cutting edge science,
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microbiology. World War 2 comes along.
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She volunteers as a USO Hostess. My dad walks in.
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He's on leave from the Marine Corps.
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He walks into the USO where she is that night, and she turns to
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a girlfriend and says, oh, there's a cutie.
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That's the one for me. The girlfriend, unbeknownst to
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mom, goes to dad later and says hey ask her to dance, she wants
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to dance with you and the rest is history.
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My dad had a very spotty education.
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He grew up in West TX. His entire job description was
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field hand kicked cotton in West TX starting when he was 12.
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You've got the field hand from West TX and the microbiology
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major from Georgetown. In no other universe other than
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World War 2 do they ever share the same county.
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They fall in love. Dad puts on his best Marine
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uniform, meets with my grandfather at the Cosmos Club
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to ask for my mother's hand. And my grandfather says, you,
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Sir, are not only not going to marry my daughter, you are never
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going to see my daughter again unless you want me to call the
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police. Gets up, walks away, leaving dad
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sitting at a table in the Cosmos Club.
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And the waiter comes over and says, I'm sorry, Sir, you can't
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stay here if you aren't with a member.
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So my dad essentially gets thrown out of the Cosmos Club,
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but he and mom are not discouraged to exchange letters.
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He comes back from the South Pacific.
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He and his brothers travel around California, trying to
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figure out where to sit down. They're determined that the
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having experienced Los Angeles and Long Beach in March, that
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that's where they want to be in March the rest of their life.
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And by pure chance, every time they go to the Bay Area, it
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rains and they decide, OK, Southern California, that's
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where we're going to set down. My dad sends a one way ticket to
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my mother train ticket and she gets on the train and comes to
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California to be with her Marine.
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My grandfather disowns her, doesn't talk to her for a couple
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of years. My burst changes his mind.
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Mom goes to the door one day and there's a Sears delivery man
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there. She hasn't talked to her father
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in two years. Sears delivery man says I've got
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your new washer here. She says there's some mistake, I
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didn't order the washer. He says, I'm sorry, ma'am, I'm
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here to install it where you want it.
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She said, no, no, we can't pay for a washer.
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She says, ma'am, it's already paid for.
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She said, who paid for it? He says, George E Hall.
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That was Grandpa. He was a scientist.
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That was his way of trying to make up with his daughter.
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He couldn't call her or talk to her.
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He sent her a washing machine. Anyway, my mother never told a
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joke in her life. The words two guys walk into a
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bar never came out of her mouth, but she was the world's best
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audience. She laughed at everything.
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She had grown up in a household in which there was very little
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laughter. She fell in love with my dad
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because my dad knew every joke, every ever written.
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He was a very funny man and she loved to laugh and I grew up
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watching my dad watch her laugh, make her laugh and thinking I
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want to make mom laugh and copying my dad and trying to
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make my mom laugh and making mom laugh transferred to making
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other people laugh. And I have been a clown all my
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life. I have remembered by everybody I
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went to school with as the class clown.
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And that's why I need to get that out of my system.
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It was a very strange household. I would, I would come home from
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school and mom would be sitting at the piano playing
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Rachmaninoff. And then dad would come home and
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turn on Merle Hangard on the radio.
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And you know, Dad's entire job history, Red Field Hand taking
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cotton refinery worker, casket maker, city gardener, city of
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Redondo Beach. And he was married to this woman
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with a degree in microbiology who was frankly, quite
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brilliant. And it was all because she'd
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love to laugh. You had quite the Ying and the
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Yang in your house. It was that's, that's a very
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good description. And I am comfortable with
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either. I can discuss classical music
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with people. I can discuss baseball, although
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that's, that's mom's too mom. Mom loved baseball.
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She was one of two daughters born to a man who wanted sons.
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She she knew baseball and we bonded over baseball.
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Did she and her father ever make amends beyond the washer?
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Yes, the he sent her the washing machine and she immediately
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called him and this time he took her call.
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She'd given up calling him because he would hang up and in
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the days of long distance, you were charged for a long distance
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call. She would send him letters and
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get no response. This time she called and her
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father came to the phone and what he got to know my father.
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He loved my father. He loved him for the same reason
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my mom loved him. Dad just made people laugh.
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Dad was the life of the party every place you went and they
22:18
became good friends. If you're enjoying what we're
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E-mail us at podcast at Cooper's dot Law.
22:37
I am now doing what I call, you know, clean up.
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And when I say clean up, I mean, you know, I, I usually do a
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little bit of homework before I sit down with somebody.
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So, and I want to return to one piece because we didn't tie it
22:52
off. We talked about your elevation
22:54
to the bench, but we didn't talk about the LGBTQ opinion in 2000
23:00
and how that landed on on your plate, so to speak, and and what
23:04
impact it had. God, it was so random.
23:08
The whole thing was so random. It was a garden variety burglary
23:13
case. And the prosecutor, in selecting
23:16
the jury, said, you know, is there anybody here who knows
23:20
anybody in the courtroom? And two of the jurors put up
23:23
their hands and said they knew each other.
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And when he asked how they knew each other, they explained that
23:31
they were members of this organization, the name of which
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I've since forgotten, which was a lesbian rights organization.
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And the prosecutor's next two peremptory challenges were those
23:42
two women. And defense counsel screened
23:46
bloody murder. And the judge said, Mr.
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Prosecutor, do you want to justify your exclusions on the
23:56
basis of something other than sexual preference?
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And the prosecutor said, your Honor, I don't have to.
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Sexual preference is not a protected category.
24:05
Look at the statute. I can never remember the number
24:08
of the statutes, 231 something or in the Civil Code of Civil
24:13
Procedure. I don't have to.
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They aren't a protected class. Race is protected.
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Religion is protected, gender is protected.
24:24
Sexual preference is not protected.
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And the judge looked at the statute, said, well, he's right,
24:32
it's not covered by the statute. And the peremptories were
24:36
allowed to stand. And when it came to us, the
24:39
defense raised that issue. It was one of several issues
24:43
they raised. And we said I was very lucky.
24:48
I had Tom Crosby, who was a giant on my panel, one of my
24:52
heroes. We said it may not be covered by
24:58
the statute, but it's covered by the Constitution.
25:02
And we wrote an opinion that said you can't exclude someone
25:08
by what was then considered just gender preference.
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It turned out there hadn't been any such precedents.
25:15
I got a call from a woman named Carol Migdon, who was a state OK
25:20
state senator, and she was very excited.
25:25
She said, I just read this opinion.
25:27
This is the first gay rights opinion in history.
25:30
We're going to change that statute based on this opinion.
25:33
And that is exactly what they did.
25:35
The Legislature amended the statute and Needless to say,
25:42
this was, I wrote it in 1999, It was published in early 2000.
25:47
It's the proudest moment of my career that that case moment is
25:52
probably the wrong word because I have felt good about it for
25:56
2526 years now. And I'm always pleased when it
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comes up. I'm very grateful to you for for
26:04
bringing it up. We got to say this is covered by
26:12
the Constitution now. 26 years have passed, the opinions dated,
26:17
the language that we used is dated.
26:20
We, we talk about those issues differently now than we talked
26:23
about them then. But as near as we can determine,
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it was the first precedent in the country that they express
26:32
the gay rights position. It is interesting how language
26:35
changes over time and, and I, I appreciate you bringing that
26:40
forward for anyone who pulls it up.
26:42
So just so they, they are prepared for that.
26:44
But the the the way the the fabric of the law is woven, the
26:52
fact that you put those threads there for others to work off of
26:56
is important. Thank you it it means a great
26:59
deal to me. Also, in my my cleanup list, I
27:05
have a notation here about the justice of the crease.
27:08
Does that mean anything to you? Yeah, that was We have in the
27:16
judges roving room in Santa Ana a cabinet where every departing
27:22
justice leaves one memento of their career.
27:27
I left a framed article from ESPN the Magazine entitled The
27:33
Justice of the Crease. It referred to my job as a goal
27:38
judge for the National Hockey League.
27:41
For 15 years, I sat in little glass box behind the net of
27:47
every Ducks game, Anaheim Ducks, and my job was to decide whether
27:53
the entire puck had crossed the entire goal line and therefore
27:58
become a goal. And that was the whole job.
28:05
And if it did, I pressed a button and a red light went on
28:07
above the net and everybody went crazy.
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And people ask me how much I got paid for that.
28:14
I told him it's not a matter of how much they pay me, it's how
28:17
much I don't have to pay them. I'm a huge hockey fan.
28:20
I would have was going to be a season ticket holder until I got
28:24
this job. I found out and I'm going to
28:27
tell this story because it's got a moral that I think is
28:30
important. I found out there was going to
28:33
be a hockey team in Anaheim because I got a call from the
28:37
Los Angeles Times while I was on the bench.
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And as soon as I left the bench, I thought, well, look at this.
28:46
The Times wants my opinion on something.
28:48
I have. I have arrived.
28:50
You know, they're going to ask me what I think about some big,
28:53
important legal issue. And I called the guy back and he
29:00
was a sports reporter and he was writing an article about the
29:04
fact that Anaheim was going to get a hockey team.
29:07
And he wanted a quote from me. Now, in those days, if you
29:15
wanted a hockey franchise, you went through a long drawn out
29:19
process. There are always several
29:22
Canadian cities that wanted hockey teams.
29:25
And I thought it was a joke. And I hung up on the guy and a
29:31
few minutes later he called back and said this is this is
29:35
happening, this is breaking news, this is actually going to
29:38
happen. And so I gave him my feelings
29:43
about hockey. And the the change was that the
29:50
people who wanted a hockey team were, I think his name was Wayne
29:55
Wizenga, who owned Blockbuster, which, you know, made him a
30:00
gazillionaire. And Michael Eisner, who was
30:03
Disney's CEO and all the hockey owners said, hey, these guys
30:09
want into our club. There is, I mean, these guys
30:12
know about marketing and stuff and they'll be a big plus.
30:16
And it happened almost overnight.
30:18
So, you know, it was surprising news found out it was actually
30:23
happening. I called a friend in Los Angeles
30:27
who had a job as a an off ice official.
30:30
That's what they're called for the National Hockey League.
30:33
I said how did you get this job? He said oh, I have had a friend
30:37
in the league office. I said what's his name?
30:39
No, he's not there anymore. Yeah.
30:42
So I wrote a letter to the National Hockey League
30:45
essentially. I cold called the National
30:47
Hockey League. I said this isn't Saskatoon, you
30:51
aren't going to have 1000 people who've been gold judges before.
30:55
I've got a day job where people yell and scream about my calls.
31:00
I'm used to that and I've driven 60,000 miles to see hockey.
31:06
That was one of the most embarrassing admissions of my
31:09
life. I did the math over and over
31:11
again. I had been a season ticket
31:13
holder for 15 years. It was 80 games a year at 40 at
31:17
home and 40 games 15 years. 100 mile round trip came out to
31:24
60,000. Years.
31:27
To see the Kings, who weren't even a good hockey team.
31:31
And the league called me and said, you know, interview this
31:36
guy who's putting together the off ice officials crew and we
31:41
hit it off and I got this marvelous job where I got to go
31:44
to every hockey game and officiated for free.
31:51
Well, I got $75 and free parking and a free meal.
31:58
You know, I got perks, some some tickets.
32:01
Oh, but I was there for every game.
32:06
It was more fun than anybody ought to be allowed to have.
32:09
And the best thing about it was that the National Hockey League,
32:13
at that time recognized as no one else in the world does,
32:18
degrees of impartiality. I mean, for everybody else,
32:22
impartial is a definitive adjective.
32:26
You either are or you aren't. The National Hockey League
32:29
apparently recognized degrees of impartiality all season.
32:33
We had to be impartial. We were strictly forbidden from
32:36
fraternizing with the players or anything like that, and we had
32:41
to be impartial. When the playoffs came, they
32:45
needed us to be more impartial, so they sent us on the road.
32:51
Well, it was every 19 year old's dream.
32:53
The league would fly me to Denver or Vancouver or Chicago.
32:58
I'd get up in the morning and play golf with my buddies.
33:02
I'd go and work the hockey game that night.
33:04
The next day I'd get up and play golf.
33:07
There wouldn't be a hockey game because they always took a night
33:09
off in between. So we'd go to a sports bar and
33:12
watch hockey. The third day we'd play golf.
33:15
We'd go work the hockey game. Then the 4th day we'd fly home.
33:20
It was heaven. It was more fun than anybody
33:23
ought to be allowed to have and I would spend the year because
33:29
this is a hobby job. All the other crews from all the
33:34
other cities had guys who had, just like the rest of our crew,
33:38
had day jobs. Our crew was lucky in that some
33:43
of the guys were retired, some were self-employed.
33:47
I would spend the year going to other justices saying, you know,
33:50
I've been looking at your Friday calendar.
33:53
It's a mess. You're going to be here till
33:55
8:00 at night. I will take that case, that 1538
34:01
that has a 2 1/2 hour estimate. I'll take that and hear it
34:04
myself. If when the hockey playoffs are
34:08
all around, you'll take some of my calendar.
34:11
So we were always available. None of us had to cancel out.
34:16
I would go around and collect these favors, say, hey, remember
34:20
back in August when I did this and this?
34:23
Well, I need dust and such. I need somebody to take my
34:26
Friday calendar or my Tuesday calendar, whatever it was.
34:30
I did that for 15 years. And like I said, it's just more
34:33
fun than anybody ought to be allowed to have.
34:35
They don't have gold judges anymore.
34:37
They have these high speed cameras and everything.
34:40
So they eliminated the job. But I've got my Stanley Cup ring
34:46
and I had a heck of a good time. You strike me as someone who
34:53
either has been lucky his whole life or who is optimistic and
35:00
just generally happy in terms of of 1's exposure.
35:04
Is it one the other? That's a really good read.
35:06
And the the two things are kind of related.
35:08
You know, I, I said I was lucky enough to win the birth lottery.
35:15
I got elected in a year in which Roseburg was on the the count,
35:20
the the ballot, and every conservative in Orange County
35:24
came out to vote against Roseburg.
35:27
And who did they want to vote for?
35:29
A deputy DA? So I got elected to the bench.
35:34
Pete Wilson appointed me without ever seeing me and probably
35:42
wouldn't have liked who I ended up being, although, you know, I,
35:47
I didn't molest any children. I didn't get in any horrible
35:50
traffic accidents. When governors pick judges, they
35:54
prosecutors are at the front of the line in large measure
35:57
because they tend to be vanilla. They tend to be somebody you can
36:01
rely on not to show up in the headlines.
36:05
And so anyway, I, I have been extraordinarily lucky in my
36:11
life. I I'm always careful to tell
36:14
people, here's how I did it, but you got to understand how lucky
36:18
I have been that that worked. I came to Orange County and I
36:24
was writing briefs that had some humor in them and that weren't
36:32
reluctant to take shots at the other side's position.
36:37
In any other county, they would have said, OK, this guy's a nut
36:42
case. This guy doesn't know what he's
36:44
doing. In Orange County.
36:47
They had had a judge who later became a justice of the Court of
36:51
Appeal who did that. And they said about me, he
36:55
thinks he's Bob Gardner. He's trying to be another Bob
36:58
Gardner. Gardner was so significant that
37:02
the Santa Clara Law Review wrote two articles about him, and he
37:06
had no contact at all with Santa Clara.
37:09
He was just an unusual guy. One of my favorite opinions of
37:14
his includes a footnote in which he takes a case and he says what
37:20
a sad commentary is on modern society, that in this robbery
37:25
case we find that we have descended from the stand and
37:29
deliver of the English highwayman to this defendants.
37:37
Give me the fucking money, they thought.
37:40
OK, this guy's Bob Gardner. So I, I, I got some leeway.
37:44
I got to write the way I wanted to write.
37:49
I found that column. It found me.
37:54
And by the time I ran for office, I was getting
37:59
contributions from lawyers who didn't know me, couldn't Take Me
38:04
Out of a lineup, but said, I've read your column and I think
38:08
you'd be a judge. I'd like to appear in front.
38:11
Yeah. My life has been full of good
38:13
luck. And it it has made me very
38:17
optimistic. I've been through eight major
38:19
surgeries, and I'm looking at another one.
38:24
And, you know, I've come through all of them fine.
38:27
I expect to come through this one fine.
38:30
It's like the sports thing. You know, it.
38:32
Winning makes you confident and confident makes you win.
38:37
And you are very insightful to note that.
38:40
Yeah, that is definitely. I have been lucky and it has
38:44
made me optimistic. As we come into the the final
38:49
stretch of things, you retired in 2024, so last year.
38:54
October of last year I've been in retired a year.
38:58
Your career culminated with the Distinguished Service Award.
39:02
Can you tell us what that is? It did, yeah.
39:05
That's an award that the state gives to three judicial
39:11
employees in this year. Well, it gives to 1:00 to 5:00,
39:17
I guess. Judicial employees.
39:20
This year there were three of us, me, a trial judge and a
39:24
court administrator. It is the highest honor the
39:28
state gives, and it was a wonderful experience.
39:33
I went to my first Judicial Council meeting.
39:36
They had prepared a videotape about me and my career.
39:40
I was barely able to get out of the the room I had.
39:43
It swelled up so much, and they gave me this beautiful glass
39:52
sculpture. I've been very lucky.
39:56
This local bar gave me their highest award some years back,
40:02
which they give one of every year.
40:06
I've gotten all kinds of awards from various groups.
40:13
Aboda, the American Board of Trial Advocates, the statewide
40:18
organization, named their only statewide judicial award after
40:24
me. I'll try to rein in my ego now.
40:27
I, I'm, I've had a lot of celebration and it's been, it's
40:34
been wonderful. It's been great fun.
40:36
And you're now moving into a a new phase in your career
40:41
potentially. Yeah, probably.
40:44
I'm negotiating with a couple of alternative dispute resolution
40:50
companies. This is the second round of
40:53
negotiations. The first round they wanted me
40:57
to sign on as an arbitrator and mediator.
41:01
And I decided I couldn't do that.
41:04
They're they were going to charge $1000 an hour for me to
41:09
arbitrate or mediate cases. And they, you know, and they
41:13
offering me a lot of money. But AI was enjoying retirement.
41:20
I like retirement and BI didn't feel I was worth $1000 an hour
41:25
to mediate a case. I I have heard 11 settlement
41:30
conferences in my life. It's one thing if a case is sent
41:35
to you randomly and you try to settle it.
41:39
It's quite another if somebody has paid $1000 an hour because
41:44
they think you can settle their case or they want you to mediate
41:48
their case. I just didn't feel qualified for
41:52
the settlement part of that, certainly not at that rate.
41:56
And after negotiating with them for a while, I told all three of
42:00
them, hey, I'm just not going to do this.
42:03
This. It isn't what I want to do and
42:06
I'm not qualified for it. Then I got talked into doing a
42:10
moot court for an appellate attorney, and I liked it.
42:16
And I felt like I had a lot to add to that appellate attorney's
42:19
handling of the case. And I thought to myself, you
42:23
know, you might be worth $1000 an hour to do this, to talk to
42:30
people. I was a very good appellate
42:32
lawyer. I was on the Court of Appeal for
42:35
27 years. I know what wins and what loses
42:40
appellate cases. And so I contacted the
42:48
alternative dispute resolution people and said I if you could
42:52
limit me to just appellate counseling, I I might be
42:57
interested in, in going back to work.
43:00
And now I don't want to do a lot.
43:02
The alternative dispute resolution, people always say,
43:08
oh, you can set your own hours. You can do this whenever you
43:12
want. If you only want to work on
43:15
Mondays, then you only work on Mondays.
43:17
You don't have to worry about getting bogged down in a lot of
43:20
work. I'm a casket maker's kid.
43:25
You tell me, OK, you're only got to work Monday, but if you work
43:28
those other four days, you'd make $15,000.
43:32
I don't have the discipline would turn that down.
43:34
That's that's just something I'm not capable of.
43:37
I'd end up working all the time. But if I limit it to just
43:42
appellate counts, like I think I'll get a workload I can handle
43:46
and I'll be able to do something that I think I can be worth it
43:51
at. But I still may change my mind
43:55
again and just say no I I'm having a great time retiring and
43:59
I've got half a novel in the closet that I can take out and
44:02
start working on again. So potentially coming soon to a
44:08
dispute resolution service near you, the appellate specialist,
44:13
Judge Bedsworth. Potentially, yeah.
44:17
Watch this space. Any other topics, wisdom, things
44:23
that you think our listeners might benefit from that you'd
44:26
like to bring up before we close?
44:28
The point I wanted to make with that NHL thing was I got that
44:34
job by cold calling them. It never hurts to ask.
44:40
If you ask nicely. The worst thing that happens to
44:43
you is they turn you down, OK, turned you down.
44:47
You had no scars. You're not out a lot of money.
44:52
So if there's something that you want to do, ask.
44:56
Try for it. I mean, I sent them a letter and
45:02
I got 15 years of a tremendous amount of fun.
45:08
The other thing is, and this is only for your younger listeners,
45:12
and you probably don't have too many people who are younger
45:15
turned in to listen to me, but life takes a long time.
45:24
You have plenty of time to make mistakes.
45:28
I went to AD as office. I was not cut out for that work.
45:33
I know lots of law students. I taught law school for a while
45:37
who are talking to people who know exactly what they're going
45:42
to do with their career and it scares them that they don't know
45:47
what they want to do. I didn't know what I wanted to
45:50
do until I dropped out of law school and talked to that guy,
45:54
went back and took those extra cases.
45:56
And when I came out, I really didn't know what I wanted to do
46:00
because that's how I ended up in DA's office that I was totally
46:03
unsuited for. One of the best lawyers I ever
46:07
ran up against spent the 1st 12 years after college as a forest
46:11
Ranger. And so he comes to the law at 30
46:14
and he practices for 30 years, for crying out loud.
46:20
You have a long time to do this. You have a long time to figure
46:25
out what works for you. Don't panic if wherever you are
46:29
right now it isn't working for you, just keep looking.
46:33
It's very helpful and very wise. Now thank you.
46:38
Well, thank you for joining us today and, and, and taking the
46:41
time to go through your practice and, and all the things that you
46:44
have to offer. Thank you.
46:46
Old men love to talk and I appreciate this opportunity.
46:50
And thank you for listening today.
46:52
Please e-mail us at podcast at Coopers dot law with questions,
46:55
comments, feedback and suggestions for who we should
46:58
have on the show. Like what you heard?
47:01
Share us with a colleague and leave us a five star review on
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47:06
there, happy hunting.