Receivership News

RO: Judge Jury, as an initial matter, tell me about your educational background.

JJ: Well, I went undergrad to the University of Colorado at Boulder. I have a BA in English and a minor in journalism. I then went to program computers for the 1970 census in Washington D.C. I went to night school in economics because I wasn’t sure English was a productive thing to do. I then applied to graduate school in economics and was accepted at the University of Wisconsin to do a Ph.D. I did one year-plus and decided at that time that economics was for a bunch of theoretical mathematicians which I didn’t wish to be and got my masters. Then I went to graduate school in English and education to get a teaching credential because I wanted to teach high school composition. Then I worked for a while and went to law school. I started at Wisconsin, and then I transferred after my first year to UCLA, where I graduated in 1976.

RO: Okay, so you are a Bruin, or wait, a Badger …

JJ: I am a Buff, I have a small allegiance to Terrapins, since I went to night school at Maryland, I am a Badger, and I am a Bruin. And, in any given sport season, between the men and women, I always have some team that is doing well. And I usually have at least one team that is not doing well.

RO: What year did you take the bench?

JJ: 1997, November.

RO: Tell me a little about your legal career before you became a Federal Judge.

JJ: I moved to Riverside when I came to California in 1974 because my former husband is a U.C. Riverside Professor of Physics. While in my second year at UCLA, a law firm called Best, Best & Krieger came to interview at UCLA, so I interviewed with them and they hired me as a summer clerk after my second year, which was the summer of 1975. At the end of that summer they made me an offer, the first time they had made an offer to a woman, which I accepted. I started work for Best, Best & Krieger after the bar in 1976, and I worked my entire career for them until I took the Bench. I was a litigator. I did complex civil litigation with a specialty in bankruptcy litigation, but all kinds of other things as well.

RO: In general, what is it that you like to see when a lawyer appears before you on a contested matter? What is it that you hate to see?

JJ: I don’t have “pet peeves.” Because I come from a litigation background and also because I work in the Central District Court, I put a fairly high emphasis on evidence. A lawyer who doesn’t understand what is admissible evidence and what is argument is somebody that I think less of than somebody who understands fundamental concepts. But, understand that I have a different standard for our consumer debtor lawyers than I do for others. The reason being that they have different skills. I have enormous respect for our consumer bar, the goods ones, because they have to work with very difficult clients and explain very complicated things to amateur clients who have no idea what court and bankruptcy is all about. So, I am not so hard on them. But when you are talking about Chapter 11 litigation, adversary litigation as a whole, there are more litigators than bankruptcy lawyers. Probably the thing I think is the poorest commonly accepted practice is taking your argument from your points and authorities and putting a name on the top of it - “I declare” - and then repeating it as a declaration. And I don’t know whether if in your district people do that, but people have been doing that here forever, and it is just wrong.

RO: I am not going to answer that - but I am going to tell you that sounds kind of like a pet peeve to me.

JJ: Maybe. Declarations are supposed to be of evidentiary quality. When you are just repeating the points and authorities you know it is not.

RO: I know that you have been presiding over a pretty giant case, a municipal case, for the past four years or so, because I appeared before you enumerable times on that case. But I also know that bankruptcy judges typically spend the bulk of their time dealing with the consumer calendar - Chapter 13s, confirmations, relief from stay. Doesn’t that wear on you after a while?

JJ: Actually, the things that are routine, like stay relief calendars, are just a blip on the screen of any given week, except for now and then when you get an interesting one. Then, it is new facts and new people, and that is not wearing at all. I don’t spend a lot of time preparing my relief from stay calendar. I think it is also less wearing on me than many of my colleagues because I don’t issue tentative rulings on all of those cases and many of my colleagues do. I can do in five seconds what they do in a half an hour written tentative opinion. So, from the point of view of the very routine motions, I don’t find it wearing. I actually have always liked Chapter 13’s. I get to see a symphony of creditors’ lawyers, debtors’ lawyers, and trustees in court all working for the same common good, which is to confirm a feasible plan. When you confirm a Chapter 13 plan, it is a win for everybody including the creditors. Generally, the only exceptions are the one-off typeof disputes. When you confirm a 13 plan, the creditor is not going to have to foreclose on the house, which they don’t want to do anyway, and they are going to get paid, usually, or else they are going to be back where they were if the case were dismissed. And I have a particular interest in the Chapter13 area: Number one, we probably get more appeals on Chapter 13 issues which are really interesting and there is lots of case law, more than any other area of law, because there are more 13s than 11s; and Number two, I have been chair of our Chapter 13 committee probably 12 of the last 20 years, so I like to see the system work efficiently.

JJ: Applying for the BAP and being appointed to the BAP is the best thing I have ever done in any part of my career as lawyer or judge. It is a tremendous experience. Working in three-judge panels is unique. We develop an appellate expertise and a collegiality of working with each other which is remarkable. I know my BAP colleagues much better than I know any of my colleagues in the Central District, even those who sit in Riverside with me because of the closeness of what we do and how we function as a whole. From the intellectual perspective – there are dogs and there are always very interesting cases with complex issues that come up. I am always looking for an interesting issue because I have a lot of intellectual curiosity, and the BAP serves that need. And, by the way, the first couple of years I served with Dennis Montali, whom you know very well, and he was kind of my role model. Dennis is a great friend.

RO: You know I need to ask you about In re San Bernardino. Maybe some general thoughts?

JJ: My general concept about San Bernardino’s Chapter 9 - San Bernardino was a totally dysfunctional city, politically and economically, when it entered into Chapter 9. I hope that, coming out the back end with a confirmed plan, the city is no longer dysfunctional either politically or economically. The success is due to the hard work by the professionals in the Chapter9 proceeding and the political changes and realities the city had to face to get a confirmed plan. It is a much better managed city than it has ever been before. As you know, having seen the economic chaos at the time the case was filed, the city now has much better books and records than it ever had. A lot of the political dissention, which caused people to not pay attention to what was actually going on at the nuts and bolts level, seems to have been solved with the recent elections. I have more optimism now for the city than in the 40 years I have lived here.