When a Hearing Isn’t

Any adult who’s ever tried to address a preoccupied teenager -- or politician -- will appreciate the 2nd District Court of Appeal ruling the other day about the Blue Zebra strip club.

Now that you’re paying attention, here’s the legal stuff. The decision concerns the obligation to listen, for public officials anyway. It seems that at an appeal hearing on extended dancing hours last June, the club’s fully dressed attorney, Roger Jon Diamond, could not capture the attention of Los Angeles City Council members, also fully clothed. Despite his pleas, most of the 13 members chatted, strolled, read and pretty much did anything but dance or listen.

When the lawyer finished, the council voted to support non-gyrating neighbors of the strip club and keep the business’ closing time at 2 a.m. Here comes the video camera part. One was there, taping the whole thing. It seems Diamond anticipated inattention and videotaped the hearing’s lack of hearing. Oops.

When he showed the hearing tape to the three state appeals court judges, they listened. Then they spoke. Their sharply worded six-page decision, written by Justice Laurence Rubin, ordered a new hearing on the old issue and said: “A fundamental principle of due process is ‘He who decides must hear.’ The inattentiveness of council members during the hearing prevented the council from satisfying that principle.”

Of course, the ruling applies only to council members acting in a judicial capacity, as in zoning appeals. In other ordinary business, they can continue to be as rude as they dare in an election year when a video camera could be recording anything.

The court decision requiring listening does not apply to fast-food clerks, spouses, parents or teens watching TV as their chores go undone. But perhaps the ruling holds hope for regular citizens, however they feel about females wiggling out of clothes to loud music. Just as videotaping has added powerful credence to “seeing is believing,” perhaps someday all kinds of government hearings will actually involve government listening.