San Francisco Chronicle
Steve Rubenstein,
Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 15, 2004

John B. Molinari, a longtime San Francisco judge, a former justice of the state Court of Appeal and the father of San Francisco supervisor and mayoral candidate John Molinari, has died.

Justice Molinari died Monday in his home on Van Ness Avenue after a brief illness. He was 94.

"He was the patriarch, he was the guy everyone looked up to and he was a great moral compass,'' said his son. "In the Italian community, he was the go- to guy.''

As a Superior Court judge, he presided over several of the more sensational cases of his day, including the 1956 trials of celebrated San Francisco madam Mabel Malotte. He also granted a divorce to millionaire industrialist Walter Johnson and his wife, ending a seven-year legal fight that, at the time, was the longest and costliest divorce battle in state history.

As an appellate court justice, he reviewed decisions of lower courts and also became a steadfast advocate of mental health care at a time when Gov. Ronald Reagan was drastically cutting mental health funding.

Justice Molinari was a native of San Francisco and a graduate of Lowell High School. He was a 1931 graduate of the University of San Francisco and a 1933 graduate of its law school.

For many years he practiced law in North Beach, where he served on countless civic and business groups and solved endless problems for his friends and for strangers who quickly became his friends.

During World War II, he served as an assistant district attorney, as the head of the local draft board and as a truck driver for a San Francisco company that made oxygen tanks for military planes.

In 1947, he was appointed a municipal court judge by Gov. Earl Warren. Five years later, he was elected to the San Francisco Superior Court, defeating fellow Judge John McMahon and San Francisco Supervisor Edward Mancuso. He was re-elected in 1958.

In 1962, Gov. Edmund G. "Pat'' Brown -- Justice Molinari's former schoolmate at Lowell -- appointed him to the state Court of Appeal, where he served for 15 years.

He was a mentor to his son, John, a longtime member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors -- especially over the telephone following the board's Monday night meetings.

"I'd hear from him on Tuesday mornings, especially when he thought I hadn't voted too well,'' his son recalled. "There were a lot of those Tuesday morning calls.''

During the 1960s, Justice Molinari was the president of the San Francisco Association for Mental Health and an outspoken critic of Reagan's drastic funding cuts for mental health hospitals.

"A public health problem of this magnitude cannot be successfully countered by traditional measures,'' he said at the time. "Intervention on a broad, across-the-board scale is necessary.''

In 1964, he granted a divorce to Walter and Pauline Johnson, awarding the unheard-of sum of $2.3 million to Mrs. Johnson -- an award that caused her husband to say: "I've been turned inside out, pockets and all.''

"This case,'' the judge declared, "is so complicated that it's beyond the ken of any person who looks at it from the outside. But I'm going to miss this case, I suppose. It's been part of my life.''

After leaving the appellate court in 1977, Justice Molinari worked as a private attorney in San Francisco, specializing in probate and estate law. He retired in 1995. Four years ago, following the death of his wife, he went to live briefly with his son in the Richmond District. After the first night, he came downstairs and announced, "This is the first time I've ever slept west of Van Ness Avenue.'' Days later he moved back to North Beach. He was a world traveler, a fervent baseball and football fan and a devoted student of the law. He was also a past president of the Recreation Center for the Handicapped, of the North Beach Lions Club, of the Salesian Boys Club and of the Lowell High School Alumni Association.

Justice Molinari is survived by his son and by his daughter, Victoria Berezin, both of San Francisco. Helen, his wife of 65 years whom he met as a teenager in Italian language school in North Beach, died four years ago.

A funeral Mass will be said on Friday at 10 a.m. at SS Peter and Paul's Church, 666 Filbert St., San Francisco.

John B. Molinari -- ex-appellate justice
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