Hear ye, hear ye, let the court of public opinion come to order.
The case before us today: The People vs. Judge Judy Sheindlin. The charge: Using her powers as a television magistrate to badger litigants who come into her court.
Proof will be offered that Judge Sheindlin, or Judge Judy to TV audiences around the country, abuses the powers bestowed upon her by belittling and snapping at those wishing to have their small-claims cases arbitrated by her.
Exhibit A: A 45-year-old man from Tarzana, Calif., was seeking more than $3,000 in long-distance telephone payments from his 23-year-old ex-wife, whom he met through an international dating magazine; the woman had been calling her family back in the Philippines.
“Didn’t you think she was a little young for you?”Judge Judy asked the man, before dismissing the case.
Exhibit B: A 23-year-old man from Burbank, Calif., sued his 22-year-old ex-girlfriend demanding money to cover, among other things, credit card charges, damages she allegedly inflicted on his car and having her tattooed name removed from his body.
During testimony, he complained that she had come to his house one night and harangued his roommates.
“I’m not interested in her insulting your roommates,”Judge Judy huffed. “I’m not even interested in her insulting you. You’re not going to get compensated for it, sir.”Glaring at the man, she directed the woman to pay for other charges, but not for the tattoo removal.
Judge Judy, do you have anything to say in your defense?
“I’m not mean on the bench. I think that people misperceive being mean for being direct, for forcing people to look at themselves and say `It’s foolish.’ “
“I’m never mean,”Judge Sheindlin reiterated on radio station WVAZ-FM as part of a recent visit to Chicago to promote her program, which airs weekdays from 6 to 7 p.m. on WCIU-Ch. 26.
“No? Then what’s the legal term for it?” shot back radio co-host George Willborn.
Judge Judy is brutally honest when dealing with those who come before her in her television “courtroom.” She wants to “cut to the chase,” as she scoldingly told the man seeking tattoo reparations, tapping her wristwatch and adding, “I have other things to do today.”
The judge also sees her “bench” as a forum to teach not only those who come before her, but also people watching at home who may have the same problems. How, she wonders, is it mean to tell a divorcing couple “you’re supposed to love your children more than you hate each other?”
“I let people know when they come into my courtroom that this is my courtroom,” she said. “Not theirs.”
Judge Judy drove that point home last month, when John Lydon, better known as rock star Johnny Rotten, was brought before her (somewhat reluctantly) by a drummer suing the singer for firing him from a tour and allegedly head-butting him.
“Mr. Lydon, if you can’t behave, sir, I’m going to show you the door,” Judge Judy told Rotten, who had been acting sarcastic and rude in expressing his distaste for the whole affair.
Rotten “came into my playpen trying to take over,” Sheindlin says of the episode. She eventually threw the case out.
Meant to be a lawyer
It is this style of justice that has made the “Judge Judy” show popular in syndication for the past two seasons. But Sheindlin’s style developed over the course of more than 20 years in New York City courts, as both a prosecutor and judge.
Judge Judy, born Judy Blum in Brooklyn in 1942, dreamed of being a lawyer at the age of 3. “I had a big mouth,” she says. The daughter of a dentist and a woman who, she jokes, “ran my father,” she got her degree at New York Law School in 1965 and practiced for a time in Manhattan.
“I knew that I wanted to be a lawyer, but I also knew that I didn’t want to miss anything in life,” she says. So she stayed home and began raising two children with her first husband (she is remarried to Jerry Sheindlin, a Supreme Court judge in New York).
When the kids reached school age, “I was really climbing the walls,” she says. “I really needed something else to do.” An old classmate, who was a prosecutor in Family Court, offered her a job in 1972.
“It was just fortuitous that it was the right place for me,” she says. “Family Court was a home to me for years. It was a hard place to work, but very gratifying. If you (handled) 100 cases and you could make a difference in two, it was a lot.”
After 10 years as a prosecutor, Judge Judy was appointed to the Family Court bench in 1982 by then-Mayor Ed Koch, who, ironically, is now her competitor as a TV judge in a revival of “The People’s Court,” the televised small-claims showcase that starred retired California judge Joseph Wapner from 1981-93 (Sheindlin always thought she could litigate better than Wapner).
Sheindlin was appointed supervising judge of all Manhattan courts four years later, handling administrative duties while continuing to hear cases. She estimates that she has presided over more than 20,000 cases.
She says it took her perhaps six months to begin exercising her judicial muscles and develop her hard-nosed style. But, she says. “Once I got comfortable in my chair, the style remained pretty constant. And you know, as people get older, they get meaner.” This is a statement that, on further scrutiny, Judge Judy may want stricken from the record.
Sheindlin had to be tough in Family Court because the caseload was tough– juvenile offenders, child abuse and neglect, domestic violence and more. Some of those trials still rattle her. One, toward the end of her active career in the judiciary, involved two teenagers with nothing better to do one day than knocking down a 90-year-old woman who was carrying groceries.
Their lawyers argued “They didn’t mean it . . . they had no intention of hurting her,” recalls Judge Judy, her voice steadily rising in indignation.
“I said, `What do you think happens when you throw a 90-year-old woman to the ground? She is not a soccer ball!’ “
Sheindlin still gets agitated when she thinks of that case, her 5-foot-1-inch frame rising from her chair.
“I’m so glad I’m not there anymore, because people who have seen me in the last two years since I left the court–which I had a great deal of passion for–say `what did you do to yourself? You look great!’ “
An old softy?
Judge Judy’s new look and outlook–and her retirement for that matter–is a result of a segment done on her by CBS’ “60 Minutes,” which caught the eye of television syndicators who liked her no-nonsense style of rendering justice. It was 1:30 p.m., and she was eating a tuna fish sandwich, when she got the call that changed her life.
She was receptive to the jump to television, she says, because she was intrigued by the possibility of delivering her tough love message to a national audience–although she probably didn’t realize how that might make her look.
“I don’t think that I’m mean,” Judge Judy said in what could amount to her closing argument. “I think that people like the directness. They like to see somebody who is trying to (put one over on the court) get put in their place. The thing is, people still come to court and they still think that they can (put one) over. And they shouldn’t be able to.”
A final piece of evidence in Judge Judy’s favor: When her father was in a hospital in Florida for an operation several years ago, she slipped a $20 bill into his eyeglass case so he would have some cash if he needed it. He died a few days later, and the hospital sent his effects to her. Among them were the eyeglass case and the $20 bill.
Judge Judy, an admitted daddy’s girl, started wearing her father’s eyeglasses as a sentimental tribute to her father. “When I first put them on, his prescription was a little strong for me,” she says. “Now it’s fine.”
Judge Judy can be seen on television wearing those very glasses.
Case dismissed. Court is adjourned.
