Governor Cites Cases in Assailing State Court

Gov. George Deukmejian, who charged last week that the state Supreme Court has been bad for business, Wednesday distributed to reporters a list of 31 cases decided by the court that he said have had a “negative impact upon the private sector’s job-producing capabilities.”

The cases touched on issues ranging from workers compensation to taxation to product liability.

“I don’t always disagree with every single one of these decisions by the Supreme Court,” Deukmejian said at a Capitol press conference, “but I am relating to you that people in the business community see a long line of cases that have now been coming down in recent years as creating that unfriendly, that negative impact on business in California.”

He said complaints about the court have been made to him by businesses both in and outside the state.

“They consider a lot of factors when they are making a decision about whether or not they are going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in either expanding their operations here or coming into the state,” Deukmejian said.

Affects Economy

” . . . And so if they are making a decision about whether they are going to locate here . . . all I’m saying is that if our court was, you know, less activist in this area, we would probably not have that as one more factor that we’ve got to be concerned about when it comes to how we stimulate the economy.”

The Republican chief executive, a longtime antagonist of Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, suggested to business leaders during an economic symposium last Thursday at St. Mary’s College in Moraga that they work for the defeat of Bird and three of her colleagues when the justices face voter confirmation on the 1986 general election ballot.

There will be five justices on the ballot, including three appointed by former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.--Bird, Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin--and one, Stanley Mosk, appointed by Brown’s father, Edmund G. (Pat) Brown Sr. These are the ones targeted by most court critics. The fifth is J. Malcolm Lucas, a Deukmejian appointee.

A loss by any of the justices would enable Deukmejian to fill the vacancy by appointment.

‘Make the Connection’

He said Wednesday that he is neither asking nor encouraging business leaders to contribute to any of the various campaigns to defeat Bird or any of the other justices next year but only to “make the connection” between court decisions and the ability to do business in California.

Noting that many of the decisions were made on split votes, the governor said, “I think it just is common sense that anybody who is going to be directly impacted by those kinds of decisions should be able to and should connect up in their mind the significance of the elections next year and what the difference would mean in a change of one or two votes. . . . “

As is its practice, the court, through a spokesman, said it would have no comment on Deukmejian’s charges.

The 31 decisions cited by the governor include 10 cases that were resolved prior to 1980, before five of the present justices were appointed. In only six cases was the court badly split, 4 to 3. In four cases, the vote was 7 to 0, meaning that convervative members sided with the liberal majority. Two of the cases were decided on 6-0 votes, 11 on 5-2 votes, seven on 6-1 votes and one on a 5-1 vote.

Among the decisions cited were those in a San Francisco case that allowed local government to increase business taxes without a vote of the people, a Los Angeles case that permitted a county to impose a retail transaction and use tax, and a San Diego case that allowed picketing on private property.

Also on his list were rulings that broadened the ability of workers to collect workers compensation benefits, held a telephone company liable for injuries suffered in one of its phone booths even though the injuries were caused by a reckless driver who ran into the booth, and restricted the effect of the 1978 tax-cutting initiative, Proposition 13.