November, 1999

By Gail Diane Cox

The $48.7-million question is whether Orange County's recovery pool is half-empty or half-full, and the answer is due any day from U.S. District Judge Gary Taylor.

Last month the Santa Ana-based judge took under submission a motion for attorney fees that, if granted in full, will pay a bonus of $48.7 million to Los Angeles' Hennigan, Mercer & Bennett for helping the county recoup $865 million of its $1.7 billion investment loss. One side calls the bonus a cheap substitute for a well-earned contingency fee; the other, a gift of public funds. However Taylor rules, it will be news, and that fits his track record. Consider:

On Nov. 1, the judge sentenced Robert Guest in what U.S. attorneys say is the first prison term for Internet auction fraud.

On Oct. 28, Taylor took over City Financial's $120-million-plus trademark infringement suit.

On Oct. 20, the judge struck down a state statute that let police officers sue those who complained of police misconduct.

On Oct. 19, Taylor heard pretrial motions in the trial of a Santa Ana councilman and others charged with extorting campaign contributions.

On Oct. 8, the judge took the guilty plea of Joseph Hasrouty, who admitted conspiring with a doctor to provide drug dealers with more than a half-ton of a chemical used to make methamphetamine.

Gary Lee Taylor likes his job so much, one former clerk confides, he comes to work every morning whistling.

These days he has a real courthouse to come to, the Ronald Reagan United States Courthouse, a 10-story, $123-million, travertine-clad structure that opened this year. It ended his eight-year tenure in a trailer that served as a temporary federal courthouse for the Central District's Southern Section. With characteristic understatement, at the inauguration the judge told reporters he wouldn't miss the buckets used to catch rainwater that leaked into his old chambers.

The judge personally put many hours into the courthouse's design and construction, and that's no surprise. He is a third-generation resident of Orange County who once called himself "a cheerleader for the bar."

"He's one of ours," says the head of the business litigation section at a local law firm, noting the 60-year-old judge graduated from Santa Ana High School, earned his BA in political science and his law degree from UCLA, and practiced business litigation for 20 years with the Newport Beach firm then known as Wenke, Taylor, Evans & Ikola.

A Republican, he was appointed to Orange County Superior Court by Gov. Deukmejian in 1986 and elevated to the federal bench four years later by President Bush.

Earlier cases that have put the spotlight on the judge include Robert Dornan failed to challenge to the election of Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez and the trial of ex-Rams star Darryl Henley on drug trafficking charges.

When the prosecution found that Henley had targeted the judge for assassination, heavy security surrounded him and his family, a wife and three children. Once again, observers report, he was to all appearances the quiet in the middle of the storm.

Yes, it is possible to upset the judge, says a lawyer who has known him since the Wenke Taylor days: "He doesn't like attorneys who are overzealous or sarcastic or rude. That makes him very unhappy."