HON. Alan S. Rosenfield
Judge
Superior Court of California County of Los Angeles
Career Highlights: Elevated by unification to Los Angeles Superior Court, 2000; appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian to Los Angeles Municipal Court (Newhall), 1990; deputy district attorney, Los Angeles County, 1984-90
By Don Ray
Daily Journal Staff Writer
It was instantly clear to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Alan S.
Rosenfield that someone had slipped, unseen, into his chambers at the Lancaster
Courthouse.
Some sneaky scoundrel had violated the judicial officer’s private sanctuary
and had removed, tampered with and then returned the court’s most powerful
symbol of authority: Rosenfield’s black judicial robe.
It didn’t matter that litigants, lawyers and staff were awaiting him in the
courtroom. There was no way Rosenfield, 53, was going to wear the robe in that
condition.
Absolutely no way.
Someone had sewn three-inch black, frilly lace around its cuffs and collar.
“I had to borrow one of my colleague’s robes until I could unstitch mine,”
Rosenfield said.
The former deputy district attorney and one-time sheriff’s deputy didn’t
know who was out to get him, but he certainly knew the motive: revenge.
However, there were so many possible suspects.
Was it the law enforcement supervisor who had come home to discover that
Rosenfield and his pals had converted the officer’s driveway into a carpool
lane, replete with the highway signpost sunk into his front yard?
Could it have been the colleague who had returned to his own chambers one
day to be greeted by a squawking parrot?
Maybe the robe mischief was related to the time Rosenfield replaced all but
one of the photos of former California Highway Patrol commanders at the local
station with goofy pictures of himself.
So many suspects.
The identity of the culprit became undeniably clear when Rosenfield
returned to his chambers, turned on his computer and found the guilty party’s
grinning, diabolic mug filling the screen.
This obviously was retaliation for the time Rosenfield had replaced the
rear license plate frame of a CHP official’s personal car with one that read, “I
love our local judge.”
Rosenfield says he was surprised it took as long as it did for his friendly
foe to discover the prank and return fire.
The Black Lace Robe Caper, as it turns out, is merely one snapshot in a
gallery of gags, antics and practical jokes — jokes that Supervising Judge
Thomas R. White says are not only harmless but also at times even therapeutic.
White says the playfulness, which almost always involves Rosenfield, tends
to lighten the tension at the courthouse.
“Most of the humor and fun is relegated to off-duty hours outside of the
courtroom,” White said.
Inside the courtroom, White says, Rosenfield is a gifted judicial officer
who has the added gift of humor.
“He’s extremely bright and fully capable of handling the most complex
issues,” White said. “He recently heard a most difficult case in which both
attorneys were emotionally charged.
“His demeanor under fire was excellent. He didn’t become engaged in the
attorneys’ fights. He wouldn’t take the bait.”
Acton attorney Jonathan T. Trevillyan has appeared before Rosenfield for a
dozen years and says he believes Rosenfield has appellate-court potential.
“He’s a very, very smart judge,” Trevillyan said. “He’s the kind of judge
who can give you judicial cites if he wants to. He reads every little word you
put in front of him and he retains it all.
“You can’t help but respect a judicial officer with that kind of
knowledge.”
“Some judges look down on you and your clients as if to say, ‘What are you
doing here?’” Trevillyan said. “But not Judge Rosenfield. He’s more, ‘Thanks for
being here. We’re here to resolve a problem. What can we do?’”
Rosenfield says there’s logic behind his courtroom style.
“If you start from the premise that most people standing in front of you
aren’t particularly thrilled about having to be there,” he said, “you might as
well do what you can to take the edge off.”
Rosenfield reduces the tension in the courtroom, he says, by being
respectful and by allowing himself — and everyone else in his civil courtroom —
to have a little fun.
“He’s the kind of guy who wants to enjoy his day and wants others to,
also,” Lancaster attorney R. Rex Parris said, “even when we’re doing serious
stuff.”
“You look forward to getting up in the morning and going to trial because
you know that it won’t be oppressive,” Parris said. “Even the jurors enjoy it a
lot more. He makes it very warm and comfortable for them and includes them in
the fun.”
Leilana Aranda is a coroner’s investigator in Lancaster and a reserve
deputy sheriff who appears often in courtrooms as a witness.
When she recently ended up on a jury panel in Rosenfield’s court, she says,
she found the experience to be a nice break from the usual.
“I went so far as to write an article on it for our reserve sheriffs
newsletter,” Aranda said. “It can be a very rewarding experience. He used a lot
of humor and made us feel very comfortable.”
She wrote about how she and some other female jurors had such an enjoyable
experience that they vowed to get together again after the trial.
“We formed a group called ‘Rosie’s Girls,’” Aranda said, “and we’re
planning to have lunch and then go sit in his court again.”
Rosenfield was born in Chicago and came with the family to California when
he was 6 months old. He sums up his personal history in less than a minute.
“The life story is pretty simple,” he said. “Birmingham High School in Van
Nuys, one semester at Valley College, graduated from Grinnell College, Grinnell,
Iowa.”
Then he returned to California.
“I was enjoying the hobby of flying, so I started teaching flying for a
while,” Rosenfield said. “I started as a reserve deputy sheriff back in 1974,
and then in 1975 I started law school.
“And after one year of day sessions at Southwestern, I switched to the
night program because I ran out of money and also became a regular deputy
sheriff.”
“I worked the jail and then worked Court Services as a bailiff,” he said.
“That’s where I got a lot of my courtroom experience.”
In 1984, Rosenfield accepted a position as a Los Angeles County deputy
district attorney.
In 1990, Gov. George Deukmejian appointed Rosenfield to the Newhall
Municipal Court. In 2000, he became a Superior Court judge through unification.
In 2002, he made the move to the Lancaster Courthouse.
“I was doing criminal,” he said. “After 13 years, I said, ‘Hey, I’d really
like to do civil,’ so I got it.”
His encapsulated autobiography doesn’t include a separate, parallel career
in the Army Reserves in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he worked his
way up to the rank of lieutenant colonel.
He worked as a military judge and later became staff judge advocate, the
principal lawyer for the 311th Corps Support Command in West Los Angeles.
Rosenfield was married and divorced during the 1990s, he said, and now
lives alone in Valencia with his two canine pals: Howie, a German
shepherd-Labrador retriever mix, and Banzai, a Chihuahua-Jack Russell terrier
mix.
His parents died two decades ago, but he stays in close touch with his
brother and sister-in-law and his two nephews.
Rosenfield also plunks or plinks — he’s not sure which — a five-string
banjo to make bluegrass music, rides his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, likes to
watch old action and war movies and enjoys going for long walks with the dogs.
Occasionally, he goes flying out of Van Nuys Airport.
And he enjoys going to work each day.
“It’s probably the best job on the face of the earth,” Rosenfield said and
then pondered for a nanosecond. “I should say it’s the best legal job on the
face of the earth.”
Rosenfield’s mind seems to be racing all the time. It’s as if he’s
analyzing what he just heard himself say and is looking for the next one-liner.
With his busy calendar — some say among the busiest in Los Angeles County —
Rosenfield limits his humor to witty snippets, facial expressions and even some
pantomiming to keep things moving along pleasantly.
Recently, when the defense attorney finished cross-examining the
plaintiff’s final witness, Rosenfield looked to the plaintiff’s attorney for the
next move.
When the pregnant pause gestated into a lengthy silence, the judge made a
pillow out of his hands and closed his eyes like a sleeping baby.
“Oh,” the plaintiff’s attorney said when she recognized the nonverbal
message, “we rest.”
Lancaster attorney Darlene Ragan says Rosenfield’s humor is part of what
makes his courtroom bearable.
“Some attorneys are shocked that he has a sense of humor,” Ragan said. “I
think he sets his boundaries very clearly for you. He will accept a little
levity with the purpose of easing the tension.”
Recently, when she presented as an exhibit a photograph of a vacant parking
space, the judge asked whether there was any significance to a broom that was
propped up against a wall in the picture.
“There were no attorneys around it — particularly female attorneys, Your
Honor,” Ragan told him, “so probably not.”
Ragan said she knew Rosenfield would be receptive to her playfulness, but
she knows there are limits.
“That was my one comment,” she said. “If I would have made two more, he
would have shut me down.”
At one point, Lancaster defense attorney Lawrence C. Hales told the judge
that the plaintiff in the case had claimed he was planning to donate to the
blind some “junker” cars in question.
Rosenfield thought for an instant and then displayed a dismayed expression,
as if to say, “Blind people driving junker cars?”
“Yes, I know,” Hales said in jest. “The idea of blind people driving junker
cars is disturbing. They should drive good cars that are in perfect working
order, not junkers.”
It’s this playful banter that sends people out of Rosenfield’s courtroom
smiling, whether they’ve won or lost, Trevillyan said.
The judge has the knack of finding the right balance so that he doesn’t
cross the line, says White, his supervisor.
“He can carry it off a little better than other people can,” White said.
“He just has a way of handling it so everybody feels a lot better.”
And White should know.
It’s no secret that White and Rosenfield have been going at each other
playfully for years, starting way back when White was a commissioner at the
Newhall Municipal Court and Rosenfield was the presiding judge.
They both tell a similar story about the squawking parrot: White had
somehow pawned off on Rosenfield a most annoying civil case involving a dispute
over the irritatingly noisy bird.
“He had to listen to 45 minutes on tape of a squawking parrot,” White
recalled. “He grumbled and groused when he found out I could have kept that case
myself.”
When White and others would pass Rosenfield in the hall, they would make
bird sounds.
But it didn’t stop there, Rosenfield says.
“I was left with a stuffed parrot or two in my chambers,” he said.
Rosenfield countered by enlisting the help of a friend who owned a parrot.
White remembers the incident well.
“One day,” White said, “I showed up, and there was a live parrot in my
chambers, squawking and making bird sounds.”
And from time to time, White would find a porcelain statue of a bird inside
his car.
Despite the years that have passed, and their move from Newhall to
Lancaster, White and Rosenfield still squawk at each other when they’re not
where the public can hear them.
“I figure, what the heck,” Rosenfield said, “If you’ve got a sense of
humor, you might as well use it.”
He acknowledges the risk: “So you’re faced with a bunch of people staring
at you in shock, saying, ‘I can’t believe he said that.’
“Or you crack up the house, and everybody’s in stitches.”