Julius Title, Oldest Working Calif. Judge, Has Died at Age 93
Julius Title, who reportedly was the oldest working judge in California’s state courts, has died of heart failure. He was 93.
Although he officially retired in 1985, Title found that he missed hearing cases. So he went back to work, as an arbitrator, a special master and a judge pro tem in civil disputes, the Los Angeles Times reports.
In 1997, he also began hearing state-court cases as a member of the Assigned Judges Program, whose appointed jurists fill in at courts that have vacancies, ailing judges or simply a lot of cases that need to be heard. There are 375 retired judges in the program, but Title was the oldest, according to a spokeswoman for the Judicial Council of California.
A practicing real estate lawyer earlier in his lengthy career, Title became a Los Angeles Municipal Court judge in 1966 and was appointed to the state Superior Court in 1970, the newspaper writes. Colleagues marveled at his continuing enthusiasm for his work, in large cases and small.
“Here was a guy who was 93 years old and just as sharp as any other judge on the bench,” says Santa Monica Superior Court Judge Gerald Rosenberg, who has known Title for 25 years. “He’d sit down with me and say, ‘Look, I have to talk to you about this case.’ Maybe they were arguing over $50, but he treated it like they were arguing over $50 million.”
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