Lucas: ‘He Quickly Became Very Good at It’

When then-Gov. Ronald Reagan named Malcolm M. Lucas to the Los Angeles Superior Court in 1967, the only criminal cases the new jurist had handled were his own parking tickets. The first case he presided over involved the death penalty.

Former California Chief Justice Donald Wright counseled Lucas: “Don’t worry. You’ll catch on.”

Four years later, Lucas was the supervising judge of the court’s criminal division. By then, however, he had attracted the attention of the Nixon Administration and was named to the federal bench in Los Angeles.

Once again, he found himself afloat in unfamiliar waters, presiding over antitrust lawsuits and patent disputes so complex they appeared to defy understanding.

He once jokingly gave a courtroom filled with lawyers what he called their Miranda rights: “Gentlemen, I want to hasten to disclaim any particular knowledge about antitrust. I think we better talk very seriously about settling. I’m liable to find you contributorily negligent or guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Lucas applied himself to the arcane avenues of federal law with the same energy he had taken to the criminal bench--often traveling thousands of miles to attend seminars on his own time.

Said one Los Angeles attorney who frequently appeared before him: “He quickly became very good at it.”

Tall, lean and silver-haired, Lucas, 59, of Los Alamitos has since earned a reputation among his peers as “a judge’s judge.” Lawyers who had appeared before him and several of his judicial peers hailed his appointment to the state Supreme Court in 1984.

Born in Berkeley and raised in Long Beach, Lucas graduated from USC in 1950 and earned his law degree there three years later. He took the next year off to travel around Europe before returning to Long Beach to enter practice with his brother. They were soon joined by another attorney with political ambitions--George Deukmejian.

Lucas married his wife, Joan, in 1956. They have two children, Gregory, 28, and Lisa, 26.