Roger Jon Diamond

On Thursday, February 20, Los Angeles lost a hometown legend with the passing of Roger Jon Diamond.

Born in Los Angeles on May 17, 1943, Diamond graduated from Hamilton High (1961), UCLA (1964), and UCLA Law (1966). In 1964, he married his high school sweetheart Francine (Busch) Diamond. When he told his parents he’d met the girl he intended to marry, they expressed concern, seeing as she was his first girlfriend ever. His response: “Isn’t it possible to get the winning ticket on the first try?” For both of them, it turned out to be just that.

Along with Fran, Roger was beloved by his two daughters, and four grandchildren, all of whom grew up in Pacific Palisades within one mile of Roger and Fran’s home overlooking the Pacific. Their home was the gathering place for family events, as well as the site of numerous community and political events.

Roger was known for his passionate advocacy on behalf of environmental causes, his love of sports, and his devotion to his family, as well as his sense of humor that earned him the honorific of “class cut-up” at Hamilton High. He never missed a recital, play, or sports game of his daughters or grandchildren, always telling them (and believing) that they were each the star of the show.

Roger loved practicing law. While the more scintillating elements of his 55-year legal career often led the news, he brought to bear his brilliant and unique legal mind on important political and environmental issues, including the 20-year “No Oil” battle to prevent Occidental Petroleum from drilling on the Pacific Palisades bluffs, culminating in a winning ballot initiative in 1988, and his crusades against air pollution, including indoor cigarette smoke pollution.

Roger and Fran moved to Pacific Palisades in 1968, with infant daughter Marni. In February 1969, expecting their second child, he quit his law firm job the day he filed a class action lawsuit against hundreds of the biggest polluters in Los Angeles County, many of whom were clients. A front page headline from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner read, “$500 Billion Lawsuit Here.” Lacking money for postage, Diamond walked into the biggest office buildings in downtown L.A., scanned the directories for named defendants, and personally served the lawsuit on the CEOs of General Motors, and others. The lawsuit sought to hold polluters responsible for the dirty air that plagued Los Angeles, on behalf of “everyone in Los Angeles County who breathes.” The Superior Court judge dismissed the case, which he derided as “Diamond versus the World,” as unwieldy.

Though his class action was unsuccessful, Diamond remained committed to the environment. In 1968, he noticed a small posting in the newspaper related to city property on the Palisades bluffs for oil drilling. He jumped into action, getting a TRO, which he handed to a construction worker to stop work. Thus began the twenty-year battle to protect the coastline from oil drilling. It wended its way through the courts, L.A. City Council, and the Mayor’s office, culminating in 1988 with the passage of Proposition O. A fellow “No Oil” Board Member told a reporter, “He’s just one of the most unique people I’ve ever met because he does things differently. We would have lost if he hadn’t been so unpredictable about what he came up with in the law, obscure interpretations of the law. He threw off all the legal giants Oxy hired. They’d be there in their $3000 suits and he’d come in with beat up shoes and his beat up briefcase – that’s the way he’s always been.”

In a move that would shape his career, in 1969, needing clients, a secretary in his small office building in Pacific Palisades, showed him an advertisement in the L.A. Free Press looking for “a young aggressive lawyer to fight for justice.” (It was in this same office building where the secretary spotted Wilt Chamberlin in the asphalt parking lot shooting baskets while visiting someone else in the building. When Diamond heard, he ran down to try to play a little one-on-one.) Diamond was hired by an adult bookstore owner who had been denied a permit due to a previous conviction. After initial defeats, he prevailed on a First Amendment argument in the California Supreme Court, a victory that led other business owners to seek out Diamond. The experience provided a lesson he would pass along to young lawyers: the trial court is just a speedbump on your way to the Court of Appeal.

Diamond entered the political fray many times, campaigning on issues that were ahead of his time. He ran for UCLA Student Body President on a platform of banning the Greek system, though he was a fraternity member. In 1970 and 1972, he ran for California State Assembly as an early environmentalist with a campaign slogan, “If you Breathe, Vote for Diamond.” In 1976, he ran for Los Angeles City Attorney on the platform that he would sue tobacco companies and ban indoor cigarette smoking. Though he lost these campaigns, his ideas eventually were adopted as common sense.

While campaigning, he came to believe that the practice of listing incumbents first on a ballot gave them an unfair advantage, and sued to change that practice, resulting in California’s policy of using a lottery to decide placement of candidate names. (Unfortunately for Diamond, his initial proposed alternative of using alphabetical order was rejected by the judge, whose name began toward the end of the alphabet.)

Diamond’s career was marked by significant pro bono work, including representing Kareem Abdul Jabbar when he still played for UCLA, on behalf of Westside Fair Housing, in a suit for racial discrimination against a landlord who refused to rent to him.

His legal advocacy established  the right to enter shopping malls to gather signatures on petitions for ballot initiatives. Known as Diamond v. Bland , the case was one he hoped would lead to an opportunity to argue before the US Supreme Court. He received two of the four votes needed to grant cert.

Diamond was an early crusader against smoking. Not only did he convince his mother to stop smoking before the U.S. Surgeon General issued his official warning, when he attended movies as a young man, he stood at the front of the theater, announced that he was the manager, and stated that there would be no smoking during the movie. He was known to unleash a squirt gun on unsuspecting smokers with lit cigarettes, and to use a handheld fan to blow smoke away from his face and back into the offending smoker’s. An avid sports fan who took his family to countless UCLA, Rams, and Raiders football games, he instructed his daughter Laura to ask a smoker a few rows in front of them at the Colosseum to ask them if they would please extinguish their cigarette. “Tell them, ‘I have a lung condition. It’s good, and I want to keep it that way.’” Word for word, she complied, with frequent success.

Eventually, as President of G.A.S.P. (Group Against Smoking Pollution), his activism led to bans on smoking in bars and restaurants, something at the time people thought was insane and impossible.

When his children asked him on behalf of their curious elementary school friends, how could he represent people who were criminals, his answer was a lesson in Constitutional Law: everyone has a right to a defense and it was essential to make the government prove its case. The Constitution afforded everyone the right to confront their accusers, to a jury trial, to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and to protection from cruel and unusual punishment.

He taught constitutional law briefly at West Los Angeles law school, and memorably brought a portable television with him on the night of a championship boxing match, facing it toward his students so no one would have to miss the big event while also attending his class.

A lifelong sports fan, Roger attended the first Super Bowl in 1967, and organized a weekly touch football game that lasted until COVID shutdowns. When he graduated law school, he bought himself season tickets to the LA Rams. Years later, when the Rams and Raiders both announced plans to leave the city, he sued both teams for breach of contract, alleging that the personal seat license gave every ticket holder the right to renew their PSL each year. The remedy for this breach was the chance for him to buy tickets in St. Louis and Oakland, which he did, getting a preview of the stadiums and choosing the best seats. His daughter was a law student at UC Berkeley at the time, and for the next two football seasons, he mailed her a ticket each week, then flew to Oakland for the day and met her at the seats.

Although he traveled the world with Fran, his home in Pacific Palisades was his favorite place in the world.

He always spoke up for the underdog, rooted for overtime, and followed his moral compass. He lived life with energy, humor, and love. He will be missed.

Roger is survived by wife Fran Diamond, brother Larry Diamond (Barbara), daughters Marni Diamond and Laura Diamond (Christopher Heisen), and grandchildren Rebecca Diamond, Noa Diamond, Aaron Heisen, and Emmett Heisen, and nephews Marc Diamond (Sunny), Greg Diamond and niece Sheryl Diamond.

Donations in Roger’s memory may be made to the ACLU .