July 2026 Cover Story - Judge Robert Gerard: A Sequel

by Richard W. Millar, Jr.

In Hollywood, a movie that does well at the box office inevitably spawns a sequel. The filmmakers, or their financiers, want to be sure that the movie-going public knows that a particular movie is a sequel by naming it “Part Two” or copying the original name and adding a Roman numeral. Rocky V or Rambo 47 may bear little relation to their predecessors, but you can be assured there will be a prize fight in one and a machine gun in the other.

I faced this conundrum when asked to write another article about Robert Gerard. Somehow, “From a Surfboard and $28 to Superior Court Judge: A Profile of Judge Robert Gerard, Part Two” seemed a tad cumbersome.

And so, this relatively inconsequential title for a very consequential man.

Now, six years after his appointment to the bench, Judge Gerard has been selected to receive the Harmon G. Scoville Award given to “a member of the Orange County legal community whose career exemplifies the highest standards of the legal profession, who is widely known as a champion of the constitutional system of justice, and who has made significant contributions to the OCBA and its community.”

That’s a mouthful.

But he deserves it.

In keeping with sequel traditions, I start with a brief recap.

As I noted in what has now turned out to be “Part One,” he arrived in Orange County in 1978 with $28, a surfboard, a wetsuit, a pair of swim fins, a bicycle, and what few clothes he could fit in a duffle bag. He worked as a San Clemente Ocean Lifeguard, then a Newport Beach Police Officer, thence to law school and a successful career in employment litigation and sports law. Along the way, he became active with the OCBA, serving as Chair of the Labor & Employment Section in 1991 to 1992. He received the OCBA President’s Award for Committee Work and Pro Bono Legal Service to the association in 1991. He was on the Judiciary Committee for six years starting in 1994. He did the usual tour of officer duty from OCBA Secretary in 2000, culminating as OCBA President in 2003. And in 2004 he won the OCBA Business Litigation Section’s TOP GUN Award.

As a tribute to his discretion, on the heels of the widely publicized issues related to the Dekraai murder case, in 2015 he chaired the Orange County District Attorney’s Informant Policies and Procedures Evaluation Committee.

Although he was a temporary judge for twenty years, his formal court career started in 2020 with an assignment handling criminal jury trials in West Court during COVID. He was then transferred to Juvenile Dependency at the Lamoreaux Justice Center, hearing child abuse and neglect cases for two-and-a-half years. Since June 2023, he has been at Harbor Court running the DUI Court on Tuesdays, the Drug Court on Thursdays, and handling open criminal matters the rest of the week.

The DUI and Drug Courts are part of the OCSC Collaborative Courts and are post-sentencing programs that balance helping and healing on one hand and public safety on the other via tight monitoring by a Probation Officer, regular drug and alcohol testing, extensive counseling by Orange County Health Care, and very regular court appearances in front of Judge Gerard. While the Collaborative Courts strive to be courts of rehabilitation, they are still criminal courts and serious business. Robert points out that enhancing public safety via helping folks turn their lives into lives of law-abiding recovery is paramount.

Unsurprisingly, he serves on the Court’s Collaborative Treatment Court Committee. He also serves on the Court’s Grand Jury Recruitment/Selection Committee, the Court Security Committee, and the Court Employee Appreciation Committee.

His love of the ocean is reflected in his pre-Bench community involvement. Robert spent thirteen years on the Board of Directors of the Ocean Institute (a youth education facility in Dana Point); is a past USA Chairperson of the Board of Surf Aid International, a non-profit providing clean water and malaria prevention aid in Indonesia; and was a founding member of the Board of Directors of the San Clemente Lifeguard & Junior Lifeguard Foundation.

Only slightly more inland, but still within reach of the ocean breeze, he served on the Balboa Bay Club Board of Governors for twenty years. And Robert also made time to serve on the Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic School Advisory Board for eight years. During his service to OLQA, he chaired the School Safety Committee and was instrumental in revamping the school’s security protocols following the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.

When he served as our bar president, his theme was “Aloha for Lawyers,” and he had the aloha shirts (and ties) to prove it. By all accounts, from defense lawyers and prosecutors alike, Robert has managed to comfortably carry the Aloha Spirit into Harbor Court’s DUI and Drug Court programs—so much so that DUI and Drug Court participants regularly appear in Department H14 wearing . . . aloha shirts. He is quick to admit though that, on occasion, he must remind a defendant that it would be an error in judgment to confuse his kind Aloha Spirit with weakness. Since the readers are undoubtedly 99% lawyers and judges, you might be interested to know that I learned from Robert the “Aloha Spirit” is codified in Hawaii Revised Statutes, Section 5.75, which states, in part:

“Aloha Spirit” is the coordination of mind and heart within each person. It brings such person to the self. Each person must think and emote good feelings to others . . . . “Aloha” is the essence of relationships in which each person is important to every other person for collective existence. “Aloha” means to hear what is not said, to see what cannot be seen, and to know the unknowable.

The full statute includes the concepts of kindness, pleasantness, humility, modesty, and patience. Not bad qualities for a judge—especially a Collaborative Court judge. I don’t know if the late Justice Scoville knew of this codified affirmation, but he would have approved of it. And its philosophy carries out the tradition of this award in his memory.

Richard W. Millar, Jr., is tired and retired. He can be reached at dickmillar9@gmail.com.