ALRB Asks Reprimand of Its Own Top Counsel

SACRAMENTO —  The Agricultural Labor Relations Board Wednesday referred its chief lawyer, Dave Stirling, to the State Bar for “appropriate disciplinary action” because he accused the board’s top administrative law judge of injecting his own feelings into a case.

“General Counsel Stirling is an attorney engaged in the practice of law, and the board finds his unfounded attack on the integrity of the chief ALJ to constitute aggravated misconduct,” the ALRB said in an unprecedented letter to the Bar, which is charged with regulating the legal profession.

The decision to request that Stirling be disciplined came on a 3-2 vote in a closed meeting Tuesday of the politically divided board, which will lose its Democratic majority at the end of the month. Republican Gov. George Deukmejian’s two appointees cast the dissenting votes.

Deukmejian Appointee

Stirling, a former Republican assemblyman who frequently has clashed with the majority appointed by former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., also is a Deukmejian appointee.

“This is just one more time that the board majority, recognizing that it has two more weeks of majority status, is taking a shot,” Stirling said in an interview. “It’s one of the last times that it really will be able take that kind of shot.”

The three-member majority objected to Stirling’s assertion in a written brief that Chief Administrative Law Judge James Wolpman “cleverly and intentionally distorted important facts and engaged in a series of faulty assumptions in an apparent attempt to insert his personal feelings and/or bias into this proceeding.”

The statement was contained in Stirling’s response to an order from Wolpman to explain his failure to appear at a Sept. 26 hearing regarding unfair labor practice accusations made by the United Farm Workers against Hiji Bros. Inc. and Seaview Growers Inc.

Stirling said there was no need to hold the hearing because he had reached a settlement in the case, although Wolpman was not officially notified in time to avoid appearing in Oxnard for the proceeding.

Wolpman in a 31-page document accused Stirling of “serious misconduct” for failing to attend, ordered Stirling to pay costs of the hearing and suggested the board consider reprimanding him. He said he held the hearing after belatedly learning of the planned settlement because the UFW had not participated in the agreement, possibly making it invalid.

Stirling in an interview said the UFW chose not to participate, and that Wolpman’s decision to go ahead with the hearing was “extremely unique, extraordinary and just improper.”

In a written brief urging the board to investigate Wolpman’s actions, Stirling accused Wolpman of “treating this proceeding as a fairy tale.”

‘Unprofessional Act’

Board member Jerome Waldie, a Brown appointee whose term expires Dec. 31, called Stirling’s comments about Wolpman “contemptuous, unprofessional, deserving of disciplinary action and simply nothing that a seasoned attorney or even an inexperienced attorney would ever do before a judge.”

“It is probably as unprofessional an act as it has been my lack of privilege to observe since I have been practicing law,” Waldie said of Stirling’s written assertions, which were made part of the ALRB’s file on the case.

He said Wolpman, named to his post by the board, is “probably recognized almost universally as one of the most professional, fair and impartial judges sitting on the bench.”

“I simply cannot understand a general counsel appointed by the governor, confirmed by the (state) Senate, having so little regard for the judicial system as this act indicates,” Waldie said.