Sharp Tongue, Mind Gain Respect for Judge in Torrance Police Case

Abby Soven is disappearing.

The diminutive judge’s entire frame has slipped out of sight behind the massive oak bench in Department 68 of the Los Angeles Superior Court. As she sinks into her chair, her head, like some disembodied apparition, appears to rest atop the expanse of wood. One eye has fallen shut. The other is drooping.

But what appears to be a moment of repose is not.

An attorney who has been examining a hostile witness for the last half-hour begins to shift from a tone of light condescension toward one of open hostility.

Suddenly, Soven’s eyes flash open.

“I can see where you are headed and it’s going to be argumentative,” Soven rasps in a voice strained by years of cigarettes. “Move on to something else. Now!”

A young lawyer visiting the courtroom shakes his head reverently: “She hears everything,” he says. “You can’t fool her.”

Respect, and a measure of fear, have followed the acerbic Soven throughout her career: from her days as a research attorney with the California Court of Appeal to her 1982 appointment to the Superior Court, where she is now hearing the civil lawsuit alleging that the Torrance Police Department condones misconduct.

Reputation for Intellect, Temper

In her seven years on the Superior Court, Soven has built a reputation for a formidable intellect and a fierce temper.

Her brusque style is often aimed at saving time. Attorneys who ask to approach the bench are frequently warned: “All right. But this had better be good.” Those who badger witnesses are told: “You’re not asking a question. You’re making a speech.” And repetitive arguments are forbidden. “We’re not going to play Ping-Pong,” Soven tells persistent lawyers. “Sit down.”

A lawyer in a recent case found it difficult to give up his arguments, even after the judge had ruled. He found himself at the end of each day “three or four inches shorter and with his voice a few octaves higher,” joked a fellow attorney.

Colleagues say the judge’s anger aggravates a persistent stutter. Even when Soven appears calm, the speech impediment can make it painfully slow for her to read jury instructions or conduct lengthy argument. But it has not prevented Soven from making her mark.

Although she just joined the Superior Court’s civil department in January--after hearing cases in the juvenile, appellate and family law sections--Soven is already being trusted with some of the county’s most complex cases.

“In this business, some judges are better than others,” says Ricardo A. Torres, the assistant presiding judge of the Superior Court. “Abby Soven is as good as they come. She is going to try a lot of big complex cases. She has proven she can handle them.”

It was Soven, 53, who marshaled two dozen lawyers through a web of legal issues earlier this summer in the trial of a class-action lawsuit by stockholders against Walt Disney Co. and Wall Street raider Saul Steinberg.

That trial was cut short in July when the stockholders won a $45-million settlement.

‘Total Economy’

Arthur L. Liman, who represented Steinberg and who gained national recognition as the chief inquisitor of the Senate’s Iran-Contra hearings, said Soven reminded him of “some of the best judges in the country.”

“The thing that struck me most of all, I guess, was the total economy of the courtroom process with her,” Liman said. “She won’t hold many bench conferences. She rules and she doesn’t want argument. She wants the case to move.”

Two weeks after the Disney settlement, testimony began in the Torrance police case, which has been remarkable for the public review it has provided of internal affairs investigations in the county’s third-largest police department.

A jury began deliberations Tuesday on the lawsuit, which charges Torrance police with covering up for an off-duty police sergeant involved in a 1984 traffic collision that killed Kelly Rastello, 19, of San Pedro. The suit--filed by the youth’s parents, John and Geraldine Rastello--also alleges that the cover-up is part of a pattern in which Torrance police conceal misconduct by fellow officers.

Soven set the tone for the trial before the first witness took the stand, when she ruled that Rastello family lawyers would be permitted to discuss up to 40 incidents in an attempt to prove their theory that the Torrance department does not adequately report or investigate police misconduct.

Separate Trials Sought

Lawyers for the city had argued that the the trial should center on the events the night of Aug. 30, 1984, when off-duty Sgt. Rollo Green collided with Kelly Rastello on Rolling Hills Road in Torrance. The defense had also requested separate trials, with one jury to decide whether Green caused the crash by driving drunk and another to determine whether there was a cover-up.

When Torrance’s lawyers persisted in their objections to a single trial, Soven snapped: “I still believe the defense doesn’t know what this case is about.”

But Soven has ruled in favor of the defense, too. She would only permit the plaintiffs to discuss acts of misconduct five years before and five years after the traffic accident. And she refused to let witnesses discuss Green’s 1985 hospitalization in an alcohol-rehabilitation program.

Soven held tight reins throughout the trial. Browne Greene, an aggressive attorney who is a former president of the California Trial Lawyers Assn., argued on the final day of testimony that a Rastello family photo would help jurors assess the loss of love and affection in the family since Kelly’s death.

But Soven did not buy it. “Every family has a posed photograph together,” Soven said, “even when they are not speaking to each other.” When Greene continued to argue, the judge interrupted: “No, no, no! It won’t be allowed into evidence.”

Supporters excuse Soven’s abrasiveness as an outgrowth of her superior intellect. “She doesn’t suffer fools gladly,” says Otto Kaus, the former state Supreme Court justice.

Soven worked from 1973 to 1978 as a senior research attorney for Kaus, who was then on the state Court of Appeal. “She is a very, very bright person and many people have told her she is very bright,” Kaus said. “She is impatient by nature. She has a temper.”

Intellectual Challenge

Kaus considered working with Soven an intellectual challenge. “We fought constantly,” he recalled. “She would bawl me out. It was a very fruitful association from both our points of view.”

Before joining Kaus, Soven had graduated from the USC School of Law, clerked for state Supreme Court Justice Raymond Peters and worked as a staff attorney for the Western Center on Law and Poverty.

In 1978, Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. appointed the Brooklyn native to the Municipal Court. She was elevated to the Superior Court in 1982.

Co-workers say they know little about Soven’s personal life, except that she is single. An official biography describes her off-duty pleasures as reading and playing poker.

The judge declined an interview during the Torrance police trial, but she once told an interviewer that she sought appointment to the bench: “Because I like to be right and a judge is always right.”

And Soven seems to be succeeding, judging by cases recorded in one legal data base. Of the 20 recorded opinions that Soven wrote for the Superior Court’s appellate department and while on temporary assignment with the state Appellate Court, none have been overturned.

Her scorecard with lawyers is more mixed.

J. Michael Hennigan, who represented stockholders in the Disney case, said he was skeptical at first when the judge refused to admit into evidence lengthy documents concerning the entertainment company’s transactions. “She basically said, ‘Look, you’ve got a mountain of stuff here and it’s not all important,’ ” Hennigan said. “She said, ‘Decide what’s important and I’ll deal with that.’ ”

Hennigan later decided that Soven’s ruling was fair. “I think it worked,” he said.

“I was impressed with her,” Hennigan said. “I thought her grasp of the issues was just fine and, frankly, I couldn’t think of a better judge to have on that case.”

Other lawyers say that the judge would be more effective if she controlled her anger.

‘Cranky, Irritable’

“She is just too mean-tempered,” said one, whom Soven once ruled against. “She is a cranky, irritable and difficult judge. Going to court shouldn’t be a miserable experience.”

Most of the judge’s aggression seems reserved for lawyers, although she will occasionally chastise an evasive witness.

But jurors in the Torrance police case are routinely greeted with a broad grin and a hearty, “Good morning.”

And Soven was not above joking at intervals, when she was clearly tickled by the testimony.

When Torrance’s deputy police chief told the jury that officers had tracked down a judge in a Torrance bar to obtain a search warrant, Soven beamed.

“That’s in the South Bay,” she said to laughs all around. “Here, you can find the judges at home.”