Born and raised in the East Bay, he went on from Castlewood High to Yale, then to Cal Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. Admitted to the California Bar in 1958, he served as attorney for the Franchise Tax Board in Sacramento before private practice in Oakland until January 1975.

That's when Gov. Ronald Reagan appointed him to the Walnut Creek-Danville Municipal Court where he became chairman of the County Municipal Court Judges' Association and an officer of the California Judges' Association. In August 1987, Judge Minney was appointed to the Contra Costa Superior Court by Gov. George Deukmejian, where he'd advanced to presiding judge in 1996, and Supervising Criminal Judge from 1998-2005.

He retired in May 2005 (sort of), as he's been working since then as part of the statewide retired judges' program on assignment to courts in need of assistance due to vacations or illness.

"A hundred years ago we had Justice Courts in California: you didn't have to be a lawyer and the court justice's wages were a percent of the fines," the speaker revealed. "When a city reached 40,000 population, you could convert to Municipal Court."

New lawyers in Maryland could be paying a lot more to take the bar exam.

The Maryland Senate is debating whether bar exam fees should increase from $150 to $325 or as high as $400. The proposal has sparked a fiery debate among lawmakers, many of whom are lawyers.

Some say bar exam fees are too low and that the current fee doesn't cover state expenses. They also say doctors pay a lot more than lawyers to cover licensing.

But some lawmakers insist young lawyers are fresh out of school and don't have hundreds of dollars laying around to cover the higher costs.

The debate continues Thursday in the Senate.

The State Bar of Arizona is moving its southern regional office in Tucson. The new 5,300-square-foot office is at 270 N. Church Ave., next door to the Z Mansion.

The increased space will allow the office to hold meetings and educational training to better serve the 3,000 attorneys practicing in southern Arizona. The move is projected for the third quarter of this year after building renovations are complete.

The state Bar's current office at 310 S. Convent Ave. will remain open until the move.
 
Attorney Jeffrey Hursh represented the bar in the purchase of the Tucson building, with Lawyers Title Agency handling the escrow.

Qualcomm Inc's outside lawyers, who may face disciplinary action for discovery violations, can defend themselves in court even if it means revealing information Qualcomm previously resisted disclosing, according to a ruling by a U.S. judge.

In January, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Major referred six of Qualcomm's outside attorneys to the State Bar of California for possible disciplinary action after Qualcomm did not turn over about 46,000 documents in a patent infringement case it lost against rival Broadcom Corp last year.

The attorneys appealed the sanctions to U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster, who presided over the patent infringement lawsuit in San Diego federal court.

Brewster on Wednesday vacated Major's sanctions against the six outside lawyers and ruled that Qualcomm's attorney-client privilege should not stop them from defending themselves in an appeal.

Brewster said the six lawyers identified as Batchelder, Bier, Leung, Mammen, Patch and Young, could exercise a "self-defense exception" to the attorney-client privilege previously asserted by Qualcomm in a sanctions hearing.

Brewster sent the case back to Major for a rehearing on the lawyer sanctions, but shielded Qualcomm and its employees from exposure to further punishment in the discovery violations.

On Jan. 7, Major had ordered Qualcomm to pay $8.6 million to Broadcom after citing a "monumental and intentional discovery violation" in the case involving patents for high-definition video compression technology.

Qualcomm representatives were not immediately available to comment on the ruling on Thursday afternoon.

San Diego-based Qualcomm has been embroiled in multiple legal disputes with Broadcom including a case which involved the U.S. government banning Qualcomm from importing chips that infringed on Broadcom patents.

The customers are playing right along, merrily puffing away — and sometimes speaking in funny accents and doing a little improvisation, too.

The state Health Department is threatening to bring the curtain down on these sham productions. But for now, it's on with the show.

At The Rock, a hard-rock and heavy-metal bar in suburban St. Paul, the "actors" during "theater night" do little more than sit around, drink, smoke and listen to the earsplitting music.

"They're playing themselves before Oct. 1. You know, before there was a smoking ban," owner Brian Bauman explained. Shaping the words in the air with his hands, like a producer envisioning the marquee, he said: "We call the production, `Before the Ban!'"

The smoking ban, passed by the Legislature last year, allows actors to light up in character during theatrical performances as long as patrons are notified in advance.

About 30 bars in Minnesota have been exploiting the loophole by staging the faux theater productions and pronouncing cigarettes props, according to an anti-smoking group.

"It's too bad they didn't put as much effort into protecting their employees from smoking," grumbled Jeanne Weigum, executive director of the Association for Nonsmokers.

The Health Department this week vowed to begin cracking down on theater nights with fines of as much as $10,000.

"The law was enacted to protect Minnesotans from the serious health effects of secondhand smoke," Minnesota Health Commissioner Sanne Magnan said. "It is time for the curtain to fall on these theatrics."

At The Rock earlier this week, a black stage curtain covered part of the entrance, and a sign next to it with an arrow read, "Stage Entrance." Along the opposite wall, below a sign saying "Props Dept.," was a stack of the only props needed: black ashtrays.

At the door was a printed playbill for that night's program, with a list of names of the people portraying bartenders and security guards. Playing the owner: "Brian."

Courtney Conk paid $1 for a button that said "Act Now" and pinned it to her shirt. That made her an actor for the night, entitling her to smoke. She turned in an understated, minimalist performance, sitting with cigarette in hand and talking to a bass player with the band.

"I thought it was funny that they found a loophole," Conk said. "I'm more of an activist-actor tonight, you could say. I think it's kind of this way of saying what we think about the ban."

While The Rock asks nothing of its actors by way of creativity, a few other bars have been a little more theatrical.

At Barnacles Resort and Campground along Lake Mille Lacs, a "traveling tobacco troupe" dressed in medieval costume on the first theater night. Mark Benjamin, a lawyer who pushed bars to exploit the loophole, wore tights, a feathered cap and black boots.

"Hey, I'm a child of the '60s. I can do a little improv," he said. His improv amounted to speaking in medieval character to other patrons.

In Hill City, Mike's Uptown owner Lisa Anderson has been offering theater night once a week. The bar had a Mardi Gras theme last Saturday, attracting about 30 patrons, most of them in costume.

"I was dressed in a Victorian dress with the old fluffy thing that weighs 500 pounds," she said. "We had some fairies and some pirates and a group of girls — I'm not sure what they were, but they had big boas and flashy makeup."

Though there were no skits, Anderson said some people "start talking with different accents." She added: "It's turned into the funnest thing I can imagine."

One bar on northern Minnesota's Iron Range, the Queen City Sports Place, calls its nightly smokefest "The Tobacco Monologues."

Proving anew there's no business like show business, Anderson said her theater-night receipts have averaged $2,000 — up from $500 right after the ban kicked in. Similarly, Bauman said revenue at The Rock dropped off 30 percent after the ban took effect, then shot back up to normal once the bar began allowing smoking again.

He and other bar owners said they plan to continue putting on theater nights.

"There's no question we were struggling," he said. "And we are extremely nervous that this is going to go away, and we will be back to the way it was."