Stern but even-handed judge made ‘The People’s Court’ a hit

Joseph A. Wapner, a California judge who became a widely recognized symbol of tough but fair-minded American jurisprudence during the 12 years he sat on the bench of the syndicated television show “The People’s Court,” died Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 97.

His death was confirmed to The Associated Press by his son David.

Wapner had served for 20 years on the Califor- nia Municipal and Supe- rior courts before becom- ing the occasionally irascible, highly watchable star of “The People’s Court,” a daytime series on which real-life plaintiffs and defen- dants from California small claims courts would argue their cases before him.

A decorated veteran of World War II, Wapner ran his television courtroom from the show’s debut in 1981 to the end of its original run in 1993 with stern, mesmerizing discipline, cutting off on-screen complainants who displeased him and threatening to levy unspecified pen- alties on those who dared to interrupt him.

But Wapner’s reasoned verdicts, in disputes over missing pets, encroaching fences or botched hairdos, were difficult to argue with. And his evenhanded hearings of cases in which mere pocket change was at stake let millions of viewers know that no matter how seemingly insignifi- cant their legal disputes, they too were entitled to their day in court.

“People think I’m kind and considerate, and that I listen and evaluate, and give each party a chance to talk,” Wapner said in an interview just as “The People’s Court” was becoming a nationwide hit. “The public’s percep- tion of judges seems to be improving because of what I’m doing, and that makes me happy.”

Born on Nov. 15, 1919, in Los Angeles, Joseph Albert Wapner graduated in 1937 from Hollywood High School, where he briefly dated future film actress Lana Turner, and in 1941 from the University of Southern California, where he received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy.

During World War II he served with the Army in the Pacific and was wounded by sniper fire on Cebu Island in the Philippines, leaving him with shrapnel in his left foot. He received the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for his bravery, and was honorably discharged in 1945.

After earning his law degree from the University of Southern California in 1948, Wapner worked in private practice as a lawyer for nearly a decade, until Gov. Edmund G. Brown of Califor- nia appointed him to a judgeship in Los Angeles munici- pal court in 1959. Two years later Wapner was elected presiding judge of the city’s vast Superior Court system, in which he supervised some 200 fellow judges.

“I was the only Jew who’d ever been elected,” he said in a 1982 interview, “and I don’t know when there’ll be another.”

In 1981, he was approached by television producer Ralph Edwards, the creator of “Truth or Consequences” and “This Is Your Life,” to officiate on a new show, loosely inspired by daytime legal dramas like “Divorce Court” but involving actual litigants arguing actual cases.

At his audition for “The People’s Court,” Wapner was asked to hear an argument between a petite woman and her boyfriend, a professional football player. When the diminutive plaintiff finished her testimony, Wapner saw the hulking defendant approaching her and unflinchingly instructed the man to sit down. The producers knew they had found their judge.

Joined by a host, Doug Llewelyn, and Rusty Burrell, a bailiff who had served in the real-life trials of Charles Manson and Patricia Hearst, Wapner deposed such unusual petitioners as a female oil wrestler who confessed to punching a competitor in the nose (she was ordered to pay $5,000 in damages, and later prosecuted in a criminal trial) and a woman who refused to pay an advertised reward for her missing dog to claimants who had brought her the dog’s remains (she was told she did not have to pay them).