Frank Kellogg Richardson (February 13, 1914–October 5, 1999) was an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court.
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Born in St. Helena, California, Richardson graduated from Germantown High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[1] He attended the University of Pennsylvania his freshman year but transferred to Stanford University, where he earned an A.B. with distinction in political science in 1935 and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.[1] He then went on to earn his LL.B. from Stanford Law School in 1938.[1]
After being admitted to the California State Bar in 1938, Richardson entered private practice in Oroville sharing office space with retired Butte County Judge Hirman Gregory.[1] While working as an usher at the local Methodist church,[1] Richardson met Betty Kingdon, whom he would marry on January 23, 1943.[2] Their marriage would produce four sons and last for 56 years until Frank Richardson's death in 1999.[3]
During World War II, Richardson entered the U.S. Army, serving from 1942–1945 in Europe.[4] In 1944, Richardson, a second lieutenant in Army Intelligence, was assigned to the top secret Ultra Project at Bletchley Park (north of London), where he learned that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was scheduled to address the British Parliament on the status of the war effort in the Balkans.[1] Wearing his US Army uniform and using identification papers from the U.S. Embassy, Richardson talked his way through multiple layers of security and was escorted to a seat in the Distinguished Visitors Gallery next to the Archbishop of Canterbury.[1] By the end of the war, he was a First Lieutenant and had been awarded two service stars.[2]
Upon returning to California, Richardson resumed the private practice of law but moved to Sacramento, where he also taught at the McGeorge School of Law from 1946–1952.[4] In 1971, Governor Ronald Reagan appointed Richardson Presiding Justice of the California Third District Court of Appeal.[4] Richardson vacated that post when Reagan appointed him as an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court in 1974.[4] Reagan had wanted to name Richardson Chief Justice of California that year, but Chief Justice Donald Wright refused to retire because he was "frightened" of the prospect of Richardson as Chief Justice.[5]
While on the Court, Richardson wrote 212 dissenting opinions and 182 majority opinions.[3]
Among his 182 majority opinions, Richardson wrote the Court's opinions in Daly v. General Motors Corp. (1978) 20 Cal.3d 725, applying comparative fault principles to actions brought in strict product liability; Amador Valley Joint Union High School District v. State Board of Equalization (1978) 22 Cal.3d 208, upholding Proposition 13, the initiative that changed California's property taxation system; Agins v. Tiburon (1979) 24 Cal.3d 266, setting the basic rules for recovery against public agencies for restrictive zoning ordinances; People v. Scott (1978) 21 Cal.3d 284, outlining the outer limits of searches and seizures of physical evidence from criminal defendants; and Brosnahan v. Eu (1982) 31 Cal.3d 1, upholding Proposition 8, the Victims' Bill of Rights initiative.[1] In 1979 and 1980, he wrote two bellwether opinions reaffirming the constitutionality of California's death penalty law: People v. Frierson and People v. Jackson; Richardson's opinions helped guide the liberal court toward a judicial acceptance of the death penalty.[3]
Of Richardson's dissenting opinions, many served as models for majority decisions in later years of both the United States Supreme Court and the California Supreme Court.[1]
Richardson unsuccessfully attempted to convince his fellow justices to move the Supreme Court from San Francisco to Sacramento, the state's capital city.[1]
Richardson retired from the Court on December 2, 1983. Upon leaving the court, he served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Pepperdine University School of Law in the Spring 1984 semester before now-President Reagan appointed Richardson as Solicitor to the U.S. Department of the Interior,[2] which was headed at the time by fellow former California Supreme Court Justice William Clark.[3] Richardson left the post in 1985 and became a Nixon Fellow at the Whittier Law School that year.[4]
Richardson died at his Sacramento home of complications from Parkinson's disease on October 5, 1999.[3]
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| Preceded by Louis H. Burke |
Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court December 2, 1974–December 2, 1983 |
Succeeded by Malcolm M. Lucas |
| Preceded by Fred R. Pierce |
Presiding Justice of the California Third District Court of Appeal October 1971–November 1974 |
Succeeded by Robert K. Puglia |