G. K. Chesterton said, "When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty.  You do not even get anarchy.  You get small laws."  And when you break the small laws, some poor judge gets another ulcer.

Before Pete Wilson went walkabout and gave me the absolute best job in the legal system, I had the second best job:  trial judge.¹  I loved being a trial judge.  It was like being a big league umpire:  All you had to do was yell "safe" or "out" occasionally and you got to watch the ballgame for free.

But it's not all black robes and bar association canapés.  Sometimes it's like driving around all day with a flat tire:  You get where you have to be, but you have to go way slower than you wanted, and the constant wap-wap-wap drives you crazy.  Most of those days involve "small laws."

Take my friend Bob.²  Bob agreed to call a traffic calendar for a colleague so the colleague could take a day off and watch his daughter play in a big soccer game.  By the end of the day, Bob - whose lawyering career had consisted almost entirely of trying serious felonies to juries - had grown so weary of hearing that "Everyone else on the freeway was going 88 miles an hour that day; I was just keeping up with traffic," and "I know I wasn't going that fast because my tires wobble if I go over 65," that he was contemplating simultaneously breaking a big law and a gavel over someone's head.

So when a woman stood up, looked him in the eye, and actually said with a straight face that it was okay for her to drive in the car pool lane because she was pregnant so there were really two people in the car, Bob went for it. Bob figured, "Aw, what the heck.  Give her a break."  He found her not guilty.

The next day, Bob was front-page news.  War, famine, pestilence, and the National Football League were not front-page news, but Bob was. 

In the outraged opinion of most of the western hemisphere, the quality of mercy had been strained too much in Bob's court.  They wanted his head on a plate.  If they'd known where he lived, they would have been there with pitchforks and torches.  Indignant letters to the editor filled editorial pages for weeks.  Pol Pot got better press.

So the breaking of the small law about car pool lanes caused Bob more agida than all the rapes, robberies, and homicides he'd tried in his entire career.  His tombstone will read, "Once Bought the Pregnant in the Car Pool Lane Defense."  Small law, big headache.

The latest victim of Chesterton's Law of Small Laws³ is a Los Angeles County Commissioner named Thomas Grodin.  Commissioner Grodin, like Bob, made the classic mistake of trying to be a human being while simultaneously serving as a bench officer - a feat of legerdemain roughly equivalent to Harry Houdini's underwater straitjacket trick.  He should have just let himself drown.

Grodin found himself handling the case of David Grigorian, a 43-year old man arrested, according to the Los Angeles Times, for violating the very large law against making terrorist threats against people.  Not a problem.  Grodin, like my friend Bob, could have arraigned him on that charge while handcuffed in a locked box and sawed in two.

But Grigorian had also violated the very small law which prohibits the possession of certain animals without a permit.  When police arrested him, they found "Cheeta," his pet marmoset, in his car.

Yep.  Fate had dealt Grodin an unpermitted marmoset case. 

All those classes in Constitutional Law and Intellectual Property and Conflicts, all that midnight oil burned trying to distinguish res judicata from collateral estoppel and trying to figure out incorporeal hereditaments?  Worthless.  Those are all big law cases.  This was a small law case.

Very small.⁴   According to the Times⁵, "In California, people must obtain a special permit to possess marmoset monkeys . . . [and] only those who use the animals for educational or professional purposes, such as filming can get permits."  Harbor a marmoset, go to jail.

Okay, so how tough can it be?  Judging's a piece of cake.  The guy's got an illegal marmoset.  You fine him, take away the marmoset and . . . and . . . well, hell . . . what does one DO with an unpermitted marmoset?

I mean, it's the guy's pet.  Unpermitted or not, you can't just take it away from him and toss it to the nearest rottweiler.  Can you?

Well, Grodin couldn't.  Bless his poor, frail, human heart, he worked out a plan under which, "Grigorian agreed to surrender Cheeta to Fish and Game officers, who would transfer the animal to a courier who would then take him to Nevada.  Grigorian told officials he would pick up cheetah in Nevada and take him to a caretaker in Arizona."

Honest.  The commish worked out a court-approved Monkey Disposal Plan - five words and a hyphen never previously juxtaposed in the history of California law. 

So Fish and Game picks up the animal and delivers him to a "courier."  I love that part.  A courier.  Folks, I've worked in the California court system for 37 years.  In all that time, I have never found it necessary to employ a "courier" to carry out a court order.   

Nor have I ever conspired to transport illicit monkeys across a state line.  I mean that just HAS to be some kind of federal violation.  Where's Homeland Security when you need them?

But Commissioner Grodin, desperately trying to do the right thing for this man and his monkey, arranged a four-party, tri-state monkey-smuggle only slightly less complicated than the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.  There were fewer players - and couriers - involved in the trade that moved Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers.⁶

This was a lot of work - work the commissioner did not have to take on.  I'm sure he went home feeling good about himself.  He should have.

But, like Judge Bob, his self-esteem was short-lived.  A few months later, Burbank police stopped Grigorian for violating another small law - a traffic violation.    Guess who was with him:  a) Jimmy Hoffa; b) Joe the Plumber; c) my friend Bob; d) Cheeta the Well-Travelled Marmoset.

If you guessed (d) - the only one that would get him in trouble - you're right.

So did Grodin throw the guy in jail?  Did he hold him in contempt or confiscate his car or remand him to the custody of Torquemada?

Nope.  Commissioner Grodin is a patient man.  He gave Grigorian another chance.  He ordered him to get rid of the marmoset and to provide proof of such gotten-rid-of-ness in court. 

Which Grigorian did, right?  Well . . . sort of.

According to the Times, he showed up in court with pictures of Cheeta "beside a recently dated Mexican newspaper.  Red, white, and green decorations filled the background."  Obviously, Cheeta was in Mexico, right?  Right?

Didn't I see this movie?  Didn't I see it several times with several different directors?  Isn't this the way the kidnapper proves the victim is alive, or the bank robbers convince the bank manager they have his family, or the Secretary of the Treasury convinces the Congress that the economy is still alive?  Isn't this what you do right before the ransom - or bailout - demand? 

Not if you're smart.  Not if you realize Mel Gibson or Denzell Washington will be looking at the photo.  Because if either of those guys⁷ - or Commissioner Grodin - is looking at the photo, you're gonna get flogged with your own monkey.⁸

Commissioner Grodin, having been bitten once, was twice shy.  He pressed Grigorian about the Mexican decorations, which looked suspiciously like an Olvera Street estaurant.  Grigorian folded up like a wooden chair. 

Cheeta was not in Mexico, he was in downtown Los Angeles - historically, a fine distinction, perhaps, but legally significant.⁹

So poor Grodin went through the whole megillah all over again.  Tears, recriminations, sad descriptions of heartbroken children losing their monkey, handcuffs, perp walk, lockup.  But then he brought Grigorian back into court and let him promise - again - to hand the monkey over to Fish and Game.

And here, so help me, is the last line of the Times story.  Here is the part that will either make you want to stand and applaud (my own reaction) or rend your garments in despair (an equally valid response).  Your reaction to this last line should tell you a lot about what you want out of your bench officers.  Do you want brains or heart?  Compassion or capacity?  Big law celerity or small law tenacity?  Here is what the Times said about Grigorian's promise to hand the monkey over to Fish & Game:

"He was told to come back next week with actual proof."

That's right, "Come back next week and tell me again you've gotten rid of the monkey."

God bless him, Grodin still hasn't given up on this dipstick!  He gave him another chance!

I figure Grigorian will show up next week with a picture of the monkey in a Fish & Game uniform.  From the Lesser Antilles. 

The monkey will be sporting dreadlocks and holding a Bob Marley CD.  Grigorian will be smoking a doobie and holding a sign that says, "|Greetings from St. Barts." 

At which point Grodin, like my friend Bob, will acquit him once and for all.¹⁰

1. California Supreme Court justice is the fourth best job.  After Superior Court Ado
ption Coordinator.

2. Bob isn't his real name.  I chose Bob because it's easy to spell, a quality I admire in pseudonyms.

3. And A. E. Kahn's "Tyranny of Small Decisions," a rule of economics which posits that, "Decisions that are small in size, time perspective, and in relation to their cumulative effect may lead to suboptimal resource allocation," a fancier way of expressing Bedsworth's Third Law of Human Dynamics, "Little stuff always causes more trouble than big stuff."

4. The common marmoset weighs less than a pound.  And even the somewhat larger buffy-tufted marmoset, which I mention only because . . . well because who can resist a chance to say buffy-tufted marmoset . . . weighs only slightly more.  So VERY small laws.

5. And I hope they're right because I am way too lazy to look this up.

6. Although Manny was represented by Scott Boras, which is like adding a dozen couriers and a trainwreck to the equation.

7. Neither of whom serves in Congress.

8. So to speak.

9. A VERY fine distinction if one studies the history of the aforementioned Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

10. My thanks to Benjamin Shatz, whose obsessive interest in marmoset law made this column possible and will doubtless be the subject of a special Manatt Phelps partners' meeting at about the same time the Grigorian case comes back to Commissioner Grodin's court.