Roger Diamond, L.A. environmental attorney and champion for the underdog, dies at 81

Whether addressing a jury in court or chatting at the dinner table with his family, Roger Jon Diamond had a flair for the dramatic.

Once while representing an adult entertainment venue, he sprang to his tiptoes in a Los Angeles County courtroom and twirled on one foot with his arms above his head — in his suit and tie.

“What is dancing?” he asked jurors as he pranced and pirouetted across the room. “Is this dancing to you?”

“Some will say ‘yes’ and others will say ‘no’ and who’s right?” he said according to a Times article from the time. “It’s essentially an art form ... and that’s what these nude dancers are doing. They’re not immoral people. I truly believe that they’re engaging in an art form.”

Diamond prevailed in that case, as he did in many others over a 55-year career spanning a variety of legal areas, including criminal defense.

His crusades against cities that attempted to force out sex-oriented businesses earned him headlines as one of Southern California’s leading defenders of venues that some considered obscene. While Diamond himself didn’t have interest in the adult bookstores or shops he represented, he saw attempts to stifle them as trampling on hard-won 1st Amendment rights.

But while his commitment to his beliefs drew him attention and admiration in his professional life, it was his dedication to his wife, daughters and four grandchildren that left a lasting impression on those who knew him.

Diamond died on Feb. 20 at the rental property where he was living with his family after losing his home in the Palisades fire. Diamond had been diagnosed with an inoperable sarcoma, a rare kind of cancer, according to his family.

“He was a character,” his daughter, Laura Diamond, told The Times. “As much as he was a really brilliant and unique maverick kind of lawyer, he was such a family man — playful, silly, loving.”

A Los Angeles native, Diamond graduated from Hamilton High School before attending UCLA for undergrad and law school. He wed his high school sweetheart, Fran, assuaging his parents’ concerns about the prospect of marrying at such a young age by saying it really was possible to score the winning ticket on the first try.

He never drank alcohol or smoked. He found the latter habit so offensive that he at times deployed a squirt gun on the lit cigarettes of unsuspecting smokers. He was passionate about sports and, for decades, organized a weekly touch football game with a rotating cast.

He loved Lady Gaga and believed that sunscreen just wasn’t effective if you rubbed it in, regardless of how silly it may have looked, according to his eldest granddaughter, Rebecca Diamond.

“He was goofy, wonderfully eccentric, and one of a kind,” she wrote in her eulogy. “He was not merely my grandfather; he was my best friend. Nothing brought me greater joy than making him laugh. He had the best laugh. And the silliest dance moves.”

Diamond was a champion for the underdog, a trait he emphasized for his two daughters as they were growing up, Laura Diamond said. And when he found something to be unfair — either societally or personally — he didn’t sit back and complain, he sprang into action.

After graduating from law school in 1966, Diamond bought himself season tickets to the Los Angeles Rams. When the Rams and Raiders both announced plans to leave Los Angeles, he sued for breach of contract, alleging that the personal seat licenses granted to season ticket holders gave them the ability to renew annually.

The agreement they settled on was that Diamond could renew his season tickets in St. Louis, where the Rams moved, and Oakland, then home of the Raiders. He toured the stadiums so he could choose the best seat — which in his mind was “definitely the 50-yard line, but you didn’t want to be too low because then you didn’t have perspective over the entire field,” Laura Diamond said.

For the next two seasons, he mailed Laura, then a law student at UC Berkeley, a ticket for each Raiders home game. He’d fly to Oakland for a day and meet her at their seats.

Roger Diamond made a career out of challenging authority and championing lost causes — sometimes changing the law in the process.

Shortly after the family moved to Pacific Palisades in the late 1960s, Diamond quit his job at a large law firm to file a class-action suit against hundreds of smog-producing companies in Los Angeles County to hold them responsible for the dirty air that enveloped the region. Many of those companies were clients of his former firm.

Diamond didn’t have money for postage, so he walked into office buildings in downtown Los Angeles, looked through directories for the defendants and served them at their desks personally, his family said.

While that smog case wasn’t successful, Diamond remained a committed environmentalist. He helped lead the 20-year fight against Occidental Petroleum Corp., which sought to drill in the Palisades.

He ran unsuccessfully for California Assembly in 1970 and 1972 with the campaign slogan, “If you breathe, vote for Diamond.” In 1976, he ran for Los Angeles city attorney with the goal of suing tobacco companies and banning cigarette smoking indoors. While he wasn’t elected, he didn’t give up on those ideas. He helped get California’s first propositions to ban indoor smoking on the ballot in the late ’70s.

His foray into politics also led him to believe that the practice of listing incumbents first on the ballot gave them an unfair advantage, so he sued to change it. The result: California now uses a lottery to decide placement of candidate names.

“He had a clear vision that he had confidence in and he just followed it,” Laura Diamond said. “He knew in his heart if something was right or wrong. He talked about the law with reverence — that it was a tool to change culture.”