Roger J. Traynor

Roger John Traynor (February 12, 1900 - May 14, 1983) served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California from 1964 to 1970, and as an Associate Justice from 1940 to 1964. A nationally-respected jurist, Traynor's thirty-year career as a Justice coincided with tremendous demographic, social, and governmental growth in California and in the United States of America, and was marked by a belief that "the increased presence of government in American life was a necessary and beneficial phenomenon."^[1]

Accordingly, his supporters on the left viewed him as the single greatest judge in the history of the California judiciary, and one of the greatest judges in the history of the United States^[2]. His obituary in the New York Times noted that "Traynor was often called one of the greatest judicial talents never to sit on the United States Supreme Court."^[3]

He wrote a 1948 opinion that was the first instance of a state supreme court striking down laws prohibiting miscegenation and wrote a 1952 opinion that abolished the defense of recrimination in the context of divorce and paved the way for the social revolution of "no-fault divorce; but his most significant and well-known contribution to contemporary American law is probably his 1963 creation of true strict liability in product liability cases.

An earlier generation of judges had timidly experimented with legal fictions like warranties to avoid leaving severely injured plaintiffs without any recourse. Traynor simply threw those away and imposed strict liability as a matter of public policy.

To those skeptical of the power of government to redress social wrongs, Traynor's extraordinary work is notable for the degree to which it asserted the power of the judiciary to resolve pressing issues of public policy, and to redefine the boundaries of corporate and governmental liability.

Personal life

Traynor was born and raised in the rugged mining town of Park City, Utah by Felix and Elizabeth Traynor^[4]. He entered the University of California, Berkeley on a scholarship in 1919, and went on to earn a B.A. and a Ph.D. in political science, as well as a J.D. He earned the two latter degrees at the same time, while teaching undergraduates and serving as editor-in-chief of the California Law Review, and graduated in 1927.

He married Madeleine Emilie Lackman, with whom he had three sons ^[5].

Early career in academia and government

At UC Berkeley, he wrote what were considered groundbreaking articles on taxation, and then left in 1933 to go to the State capital, Sacramento, where his work influenced public policy.

Traynor acted as a consultant to California State Board of Equalization from 1932 to 1940 and the United States Department of the Treasury from 1937-1940, at which time he was appointed Deputy Attorney General of California under Attorney General Earl Warren, who later became Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.^[6]

Traynor was appointed to the California Supreme Court in 1940 by Governor Culbert Olson.

Contributions to the law

During his long and distinguished career, Traynor authored more than 900 opinions, and he gained a reputation as the nation's leading state court judge.^[7] During his tenure, the decisions of the Supreme Court of California became the most frequently cited by all other state courts in the nation.[8]

Several of these decisions were majority opinions that transformed California from a conservative and somewhat repressive state into a progressive, innovative jurisdiction in the forefront of American law.^[9] In opinions written by Traynor, California adopted or developed:

• true strict liability in tort for defective products (see product liability) in Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc., 59 Cal. 2d 57 (1963) [10], which a 1996 panel of tort law experts subsequently ranked as the top development in tort law of the past 50 years ^[11];
• the cause of action for negligent infliction of emotional distress (NIED) in State Rubbish Collectors Ass'n v. Siliznoff, 38 Cal. 2d 330 (1952) [12];
• the "moderate and restrained interpretation" doctrine for resolving conflict-of-laws problems, in Bernkrant v. Fowler, 55 Cal. 2d 588 (1961) [13];
• the rule that majority shareholders of closely held corporations have a duty to not destroy the value of the shares held by minority shareholders, in Jones v. H. F. Ahmanson & Co., 1 Cal. 3d 93 (1969) [14];
• the rule that extrinsic evidence of trade usage or custom is admissible where relevant to prove a meaning to which the language of a contract is reasonably susceptible, in Pacific Gas & Elec. Co. v. G. W. Thomas Drayage Co., 69 Cal. 2d 33 (1968) [15].

—and also abolished:

• the defense of recrimination in the context of divorce, in De Burgh v. De Burgh, 39 Cal. 2d 858 (1952) [16];
• a state law prohibiting miscegenation, Civil Code Section 69, in Perez v. Sharp, 32 Cal. 2d 711 (1948) [17]. The Supreme Court of California was the first state supreme court to abolish such laws.

Traynor was also noted for the quality of his writing and reasoning, and many of his opinions are still mandatory reading for American law students.

Criticism

The liberal tendencies of much of Traynor's work has since made him the subject of extensive criticism from American libertarians and conservatives. For example, the conservative magazine National Review attacked Traynor's reasoning in the Pacific Gas and Electric case in a 1991 cover story^[18].

In 1998, Regulation (the Cato Institute's journal) published a blistering critique of the California tort law system by Stephen Hayward. He claimed that "rather than protecting life, liberty, and property, [it] has ... become a threat to these."^[19] He identified Roger Traynor's liberalizing influence on the Court's view of liability as "the first breach":

"In the 1944 case of Escola v. Coca Cola Bottling Co ... Traynor introduced the idea of broad social fault. "I believe," Traynor wrote, "the manufacturer's negligence should no longer be singled out as the basis of a plaintiff's right to recover in cases like the present one." .... "Even if there is no negligence," Traynor wrote further, "public policy demands that responsibility be fixed wherever it will most effectively reduce the hazards to life and health inherent in defective products that reach the market." Note the appeal to the demands of public policy, rather than law .... While this line of reasoning might be the basis for a legislative debate over which public policies should be adopted to allocate and compensate for risk, Justice Traynor's opinion represents a clear case of legislation by judicial fiat."

Retirement

On January 2, 1970, Traynor announced his retirement in order to avoid losing eligibility for retirement benefits under a California law that stripped judges of most benefits if they chose to remain on the bench past the age of 70^[20]. He retired to Berkeley and subsequently died there in his home from cancer.

In July of 1983, the California Law Review gave over all its space in issue 4, volume 71 to publishing eloquent tributes to Justice Traynor from several esteemed judges, law professors, and politicians, including Warren Burger ^[21], Henry Friendly ^[22], and Edmund G. Brown ^[23].

See also

• Judicial activism
• Tort
• Tort reform

References

^ Anonymous. "Coast Chief Justice to Resign; Reagan Will Choose Successor." New York Times, 3 January 1970, p. 7.

^ Brown, Edmund G. "A judicial giant." California Law Review 71, no. 4 (July 1983): 1053-1054.

^ Burger, Warren. "A tribute." California Law Review 71, no. 4 (July 1983): 1037-1038.

^ Crovitz, L. Gordon, and Stephen Bates. "How law destroys order." National Review, 11 February 1991, 28-33.

^ DeBenedictis, Don J. "Traynor dies at 83: led state court in progressive era." Los Angeles Daily Journal, 17 May 1983, p. 1.

^ Friedman, Lawrence M. A History of American Law (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985), 688.

^ Friendly, Henry J. "Ablest judge of his generation." California Law Review 71, no. 4 (July 1983): 1039-1044.

^ Hayward, Stephen. "Golden Lawsuits in the Golden State." Regulation 17, no. 3 (Summer 1998). [24]

^ Ledbetter, Les. "Roger J. Traynor, California Justice." New York Times, 17 May 1983, sec. B, p. 6.

^ White, G. Edward. "Introduction." In The Traynor Reader: A Collection of Essays by the Honorable Roger J. Traynor. San Francisco: The Hastings Law Journal, Hastings College of the Law, 1987. [25]

^ White, Jeffrey Robert. "Top 10 in torts: evolution in the common law." Trial 32, no. 7 (July 1996): 50-53.