Judge Edward Panelli, who rose to the state's highest court after a deprived childhood within the Santa Clara Valley through the Depression, died Saturday evening in Saratoga on the age of 92.
Panelli's illustrious legal profession spanned six many years. He began as an attorney within the Fifties after which served as a Superior Court judge before being appointed to the California Supreme Court in 1985. After his retirement, he continued to work as an arbitrator, mediator, legal scholar and educator.
Panelli's son Jeff told this newspaper that he wanted his father to be remembered as a “hardworking and humble” man, the son of Italian immigrants.
“He was a fair-minded, hard-working man who came from very humble beginnings. His immigrant roots were always close to his heart and the driving force of his life,” Jeff said. “English was his second language. He never forgot his community and transcended political and ideological thinking with common sense. He was a simple man.”
In a previous conversation, Edward Panelli spoke about his understanding of the human condition and the way it impacted his legal profession.
“I've seen life from the street, so to speak,” Panelli told Mercury News editor John Hubner in a 1986 interview for West magazine. “I know when to zigzag and when to slow down, when to duck and when not to. I may not be Oliver Wendell Holmes, but I know what makes people tick. I know how they suffer and why they suffer. I have a much broader sense of the world than if I came from a secluded or sheltered environment.”
Panelli has incorporated into his profession the lesson of living without much.
Born in Santa Clara to Italian immigrants, Pidale Panelli wrestled with 100-pound burlap sacks of plums; Natalina Panelli toiled within the packing sheds, sometimes two shifts a day. Young Edward learned the worth of his own labor in an onion field, harvesting onions for 40 cents an hour.
He received a scholarship to Santa Clara University in 1949 and graduated with honors. After transferring to SCU's law school, he graduated at the highest of his class. His father, who was 54 when Edward was born, died 10 days after his son passed the bar exam in 1955. The recent lawyer married Lorna Mondora in 1956 they usually had three sons. His mother was 95 when she died in 1990.
Panelli leaves behind his sons Tom, Jeff and Mike and three grandchildren. Panelli's wife died in 2019.
Panelli's mentor on the university was Jesuit professor Patrick Donohoe. When Donohoe later became president of SCU, he assigned some legal work to his former student, who was then practicing along with his cousin Louis Pasquinelli. Panelli later became a trustee and chairman of the board of SCU within the Eighties.
He was first appointed to the bench in 1972 by then-California Governor Ronald Reagan, and through his 11 years as a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge, he served in all manner of jurisdictions: juvenile, civil, probate, family and criminal courts.
“When I was a juvenile court judge, I would leave the courtroom and walk around and talk to people,” Panelli said within the 1986 interview. “People would say, 'Man, you're not acting like a judge.' I'd say, 'If I start acting like a judge, maybe somebody should kick my ass.'”
His one-on-one skills were put to good use after serving on the first District Court of Appeals in San Francisco. He was then appointed chief judge of the brand new sixth District Appellate Division in San Jose by former Governor Jerry Brown. In a historic settlement between litigants whose claims had been stuck at $2 million as a substitute of zero for 18 months, Panelli reached a $665,000 settlement in two days.
With his next appointment in 1985, his jurisprudence modified dramatically.
The death penalty was not a dominant issue during Panelli's eight years on the state Supreme Court, however it definitely dominated his first 12 months in 1986.
Panelli was first appointed to the court by Governor George Deukmejian in late 1985 and faced reconfirmation the next fall. Also on the ballot were Judges Rose Bird, the chief justice, Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin, in addition to the court's top liberal, Stanley Mosk, and conservative Malcolm Lucas. Bird and the liberals had overturned quite a few death sentences and were the goal of Deukmejian and a coalition of conservative politicians and interest groups.
Panelli selected to distance himself from the fight – a lot in order that he decided to run the New York Marathon in lower than 4 hours two days before the November election. But within the 1986 interview with Hubner, he also admitted that his tough childhood had not foreseen his stance:
“You might think that because of my past, I lean more liberal because I've seen some injustices and experienced economic hardship. On the other hand, I lean more conservative because I've been through that and I think, 'My goodness, if I can do it, why can't everyone do it?'
He survived the 1986 vote, but Bird, Reynoso and Cruz did not, and the court gradually became an all-Republican body, with Mosk still in office in his late 80s (Mosk turned 86 on September 4, 1998).
Panelli said friends had known for years that he would probably serve only about 20 years as a judge. He could have retired with a full pension in March 1993 at age 61, but said he delayed his retirement until February 1994 after Chief Justice Malcolm Lucas asked him to stay on.
His successor was Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, an appellate judge who had been Justice Panelli's chief legal counsel during his first six years on the Supreme Court.
Panelli's tenure on the California Supreme Court was marked by several notable majority decisions, the most important of which was the ruling that surrogacy arrangements do not exploit poor women. “A surrogate's consent to hold one other woman's child is a legitimate contract,” he wrote.
A public memorial ceremony will probably be held on the Mission Santa Clara de Asis on August 16 at 2 p.m.
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