Eleventh Impeachment

A stocky, slit-eyed San Francisco lawyer by the name of Harold Louderback could thank Senator Samuel Shortridge of California for the Federal judgeship President Coolidge handed him in 1928. Samuel Shortridge Jr., son of the Republican Senator, thanked Judge Louderback for the fat receivership fees he was handed in his court. Last week the House thanked New York's swart little La Guardia, watchdog of the U. S. Judiciary, for digging up evidence that resulted in Judge Louderback's impeachment.

Last September Representative La Guardia led a House subcommittee to San

Francisco to investigate unsavory stories about Judge Louderback's administration of the bankruptcy laws. At the hearing Judge Louderback sneered haughtily at the New Yorker. On the evidence collected a majority of the House Judiciary Committee decided that Judge Louderback should only be censured. But Representative La Guardia was for impeachment. Last week when the censure resolution came up in the House, he took the floor with such a fiery speech that the House reversed its committee and voted (183-to-142) to order the California jurist before the Senate for trial and possible removal from office. It was the eleventh impeachment in House history.

The charges against Judge Louderback: 1) he dismissed a receiver who refused to appoint as his attorney a lawyer of the judge's choosing; 2) he granted excessive fees to Samuel Shortridge Jr. in a receivership later voided on appeal; 3) he appointed for Fageol Motor Co. a receiver whom he knew to be incompetent and unqualified; 4) he threw Prudential Holding Co. into receivership and appointed the same incompetent receiver "for the sole purpose of benefiting and enriching his personal friends and associates." A subsidiary accusation was that, to dodge a divorce suit in San Francisco, he established a fictitious residence in another county while continuing to live in hiding in the city. The general charge: "Abuses in high office, tyranny and oppression, favoritism and conspiracy which brought the administration of justice into disrepute."

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