When you’re the respondent in a case, you wouldn’t think that your ability to participate in the case would be questioned.  However, when the respondent is the Appellate Division of the Los Angeles Superior Court, the issue apparently isn’t quite so clear.

In Steen v. Appellate Division, which will be argued next month, the Supreme Court will examine whether a superior court clerk, rather than a prosecutor, can issue a complaint for the offenses of failure to appear, pay a fine, or comply with an order of the court.  After the Steen argument was scheduled, the petitioner — according to the Supreme Court’s online docket —  moved “to exclude respondent Appellate Division as a party litigant in this action.”  The Supreme Court denied the motion last Friday.

We haven’t seen the motion, but the petitioner likely cited one of the appellate division’s own opinions:  Simpson v. Superior Court (2001) 92 Cal.App.4th Supp. 1, in which that court stated that, in a writ proceeding, “[w]hile the superior court is the respondent to the petition, ‘the role of the respondent court is that of a neutral party.’  [Citation.]  By custom, the real party in interest (rather than the respondent) is expected to respond to the petition.”  The appellate division probably responded, yeah, but we also said in Simpson:  “In certain cases, the respondent court may have a beneficial interest in the writ proceedings and be allowed to appear and oppose the petition.  This is allowed ‘when . . . “[t]he issue involved directly impacted the operations and procedures of the court or potentially imposed financial obligations which would directly affect the court’s operations.” ‘ ”

But the petitioner apparently isn’t the only one trying to elbow the appellate division aside.  The People — who is the real party in interest — couldn’t agree with the appellate division about which of them will argue first after the Alphonsegastonpetitioner.  The docket doesn’t specify exactly what the dispute was (it says only they “disagree as to the order in which they should argue”), but our guess is that the two were not engaged in an Alphonse and Gaston standoff.  The Supreme Court settled the dispute today, entering an order that the People and the appellate division will each have 15 minutes of oral argument time and that the appellate division will argue before the People.