Antonovich Case Stirred Ethical Crisis for Judge : Courts: Supervisor's 1988 call to Eric Younger has led to years of soul-searching for the jurist and the end of a long friendship.

By LESLIE BERGER

Dec. 10, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

For Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, last week’s favorable ruling by the state Supreme Court was little more than the predictable outcome of a nuisance lawsuit he always figured he’d win, another day in the rough-and-tumble world of politics.

Speaking matter-of-factly after the court refused to reopen the case--in which Antonovich was accused of inappropriately phoning a judge on behalf of two campaign donors--the veteran politician dismissed the matter as “an example of the frivolous lawsuits that help clog up the courts.”

Although Antonovich, whose district includes portions of the San Fernando Valley as well as the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys, was cleared of financial liability in an appeals court decision, his actions were also called “reprehensible” in a small portion of a long opinion--a jab he all but brushed off.

But for Eric E. Younger, the now-retired judge whom Antonovich called in 1988, the case stirred years of soul-searching. It marked the end of his long friendship with Antonovich, and represented a rare crisis in an otherwise blue-chip career guided by the example of his late father, former state Attorney General Evelle J. Younger.

In a short footnote to the same appeals court decision, Younger was admonished for failing to immediately end the telephone call from Antonovich. He later said the court’s criticism unfairly subjected him “to a substantial and career-damaging injustice.”

The footnote also criticizes Younger for waiting six weeks to remove himself from the case. After much thought, he wrote the 2nd District Court of Appeal and the California Supreme Court asking to have the footnote erased--both times unsuccessfully.

Today, the 52-year-old Younger, who lives in Altadena, says he accepts the fact that the criticism will remain on the record. His main concern had been his reputation--”my only product, if you will”--and he said his new career as a private arbitrator and author has been going very well.

But the episode offers a glimpse at the ethical dilemma judges face when someone unexpectedly tries to intervene in a pending case--especially a friend or acquaintance.

“Supervisors can talk about anything they want [with judges], but not cases pending before the court. That’s a no-no, a judicial cardinal sin,” said Gideon Kanner, an appellate law specialist and professor emeritus at Loyola Law School.

Judges are often caught off guard by acquaintances who approach them at social settings, start casual conversations and then suddenly bring up pending cases, said Santa Monica Superior Court Judge David Rothman, who writes about judicial ethics.

Particularly vulnerable are judges like Younger, an active man from a prominent political family with many community ties, Rothman said, adding: “It comes unexpected, and sometimes you don’t even recognize it.”

That’s exactly how Younger has described the November 1988 phone call from Antonovich. The two grew up together in Los Feliz. Antonovich eulogized Younger’s father after his 1989 death, and they had spoken countless times over the years about family, mutual friends, and county business.

Before he knew it, Younger says, Antonovich brought up the case of Krikor Suri and his business partners in a Downtown Los Angeles jewelry mart. The two were being sued by fellow investor Avedis Kasparian.

Younger says he abruptly changed the subject and ended the phone call as quickly and diplomatically as he could without hanging up “mid-sentence” on his old friend. He then began agonizing over how to handle the situation, knowing he needed to remove himself from the case but loath to embarrass Antonovich, whom he believed had just committed a “mildly dumb” mistake.

Roughly six weeks later, after the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays had passed, Younger disclosed the phone call to both sides of the case and removed himself as its judge. A big reason for the delay, he says, was that he wanted to consult his trusted father, who was on a cruise when the call occurred.

Younger had nothing more to do with the matter for nearly five years, until he was called to testify as a witness for Kasparian in 1993. In a related suit, Kasparian alleged that Antonovich had spoiled an out-of-court settlement he had been negotiating with his court opponents because the call to Younger diminished his adversaries’ incentive to work out a deal.

Kasparian had hoped to unload his share in the jewelry mart for $2 million but instead sold it to his adversaries for $800,000 after negotiations broke down, a profit loss he blamed on the supervisor’s intervention.

Until then, Younger says, he continued to believe that the phone call had been an innocent lapse in Antonovich’s judgment. But during the trial, he says, he learned to his chagrin that Suri and his partners had contributed $13,000 to Antonovich’s 1988 reelection campaign just days before and after the phone call.

That discovery was “the single worst moment for me,” Younger said. “I’d always said, ‘Well, it’s kind of a dumb trick but he’s not a lawyer.’ . . . I thought it was mildly dumb. I think I used that phrase 100 times until I learned about the money, and that’s when my tummy started to bother me.”

Antonovich still insists he made the call for Suri not because of money but because of his long-standing ties to his district’s large Armenian community, and his genuine sympathy for a constituent he considered hard-working and honest.

The donations from Suri and his partners resulted from tickets bought to two political dinners attended by hundreds of people, “including judges,” Antonovich said, and represented nothing unseemly or illegal.

“These people were old friends and supporters of mine for years in the community,” he said.

Kasparian persuaded a Superior Court jury otherwise, winning a $1.2-million award against Antonovich. But Antonovich and Los Angeles County were able to overturn the jury’s verdict on appeal, winning a Sept. 14 ruling that found no evidence that Antonovich’s call had directly affected the buyout negotiations.

Yet the appeals court ruling was a tainted victory for Antonovich. Although he was spared the financial damages, he was sharply criticized for the phone call. The three appeals court justices--Joan Dempsey Klein, Richard Dennis Aldrich and H. Walter Croskey--said in their opinion that Antonovich’s behavior was “unacceptable,” particularly because of the campaign contributions.

“That [the call] was done in the context of the contemporaneous receipt of substantial political contributions from the individuals in whose favor the influence was sought makes it all the more reprehensible,” Croskey wrote.

The same opinion included the rebuke of Younger.

Antonovich dismisses the criticism as a short “political” insertion at the end of a long ruling that otherwise exonerates him.

“In a 41-page opinion, they have two paragraphs” that are critical, he said.

Younger, however, painstakingly described his efforts to do the right thing in two letters to the Court of Appeal and state Supreme Court. The first letter offended Antonovich, who wrote Younger in an Oct. 12 letter of his own:

“To assert that I took money for a character reference is an outright lie! . . . What a dumb, irresponsible statement to make--especially coming from one whose family was directly involved in my political activities!”

Younger responded the next day, writing:

“I have always viewed with sadness the events which were set inevitably in motion by your call. . . . I liked you as a kid, voted for you in every election you faced and appreciated your gracious words at my dad’s funeral. I certainly would never have taken the fateful call, had it come from a public servant whose integrity I did not completely trust.”

Younger’s letter concluded: “You are right about my family’s involvement in politics; sadly, I’ve seen things later in life which I didn’t pick up at Mildred or Evelle Younger’s knee.”

The two have not spoken since the appeals court decision was released, although Antonovich said he still considers Younger a friend.

Younger retired from the bench in January and is now writing a book on practicing law in California, as well as working as a privately hired judge in arbitration cases and a member of the law firm of Graham & James.

His new, part-time post at Graham & James recently forced the firm to give up Cho Hung Bank as a client--the result of another published, appeals court decision that received prominent coverage in the Los Angeles Daily Journal. The Korean bank had had a case before Younger that was still pending when he retired, and the woman suing the bank successfully argued that keeping Graham & James as its attorneys would give it an unfair advantage.

That case, too, contained a footnote, according to Younger, but one that went out of its way to say he had done nothing wrong. Said Younger: “That was as kind as the other thing was unkind.”

Evelle Younger

Evelle Younger, who died in his sleep in May 1989, was the Los Angeles County district attorney during the prosecutions of mass murderer Charles Manson and Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan.

In a long career that reflected the turmoil of the times, he became the first prosecutor in the country to undertake mass felony prosecutions of college campus demonstrators during the 1960s--pursuing 1,730 felony charges against 24 students at what is today Cal State Northridge.

He also served as a Municipal and Superior Court judge in Los Angeles County before becoming the first Republican in a generation to be elected state attorney general.

For all his staunch Republican stands on law and order, Younger also became an unlikely friend of environmentalists. As attorney general, he shepherded the 1972 Mammoth Lake case that resulted in a landmark court ruling requiring environmental impact reports from land developers.

His only election loss came in 1978, when he ran for governor against incumbent Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown.

Eric Younger

Eric Younger says he spent a lot of time as a teenager in his father’s courtroom before following him into the field--graduating from Harvard Law School, joining the firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and eventually becoming a Superior Court judge.

Before his election to Superior Court in 1980, Eric Younger was appointed a Municipal Court judge by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, an old political friend of his father’s.

Just as his father was known as a “respected moderate Republican,” Eric Younger says he switched his political affiliation from Republican to Democrat “when Sen. [Bob] Dole came out for the right of all Americans to own machine guns.”

“Probably, I’m like many ex-cops and think there are too many guns around,” said Younger, who worked briefly as a sheriff’s deputy and Hermosa Beach police officer before he became a lawyer.

Eric Younger gained national notoriety for presiding over the 1984 trial of Robert Lee Moody, an 18-year-old La Puente man who fatally shot his abusive father. Moody drew an outpouring of public support--including many letters urging Younger to give him a lenient sentence.

Younger complied, placing Moody on five years’ probation, including two years in “Peace-Corps-type” missionary work overseas.