Former San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Phillip Morris has died.
Born in Bell in 1936, Morris was 90 when he passed away peacefully on Monday evening, May 11, 2026, shortly after suffering a fall at his Redlands home.
When he was six years old, he moved with his parents Emanuel and Wilma Morris and the rest of his from Bell in Los Angeles County, which was 17 miles from California’s West Coast on the Pacific Ocean, to Needles, which lies directly on California’s East Coast on the Colorado River. His father was a conductor on the Santa Fe Railroad. Needles, which is where the first railroad bridge across the Colorado River was built in 1883 and where the Red Rock Cantilever Railroad Bridge was constructed in 1890, was, like San Bernardino, Colton and Barstow, a railroad town. In the early 1900s, it was considered to be one of San Bernardino County’s major cities, and was the eighth of the county’s current 24 municipalities to incorporate in 1913.
Morris grew up in the remote desert city across the river from Arizona and was educated in its public schools. With his younger brother, Pat, and sister, Nancy, he swam, canoed, fished, and eventually water skied in the fast, swirling waters of the mighty Colorado River. He explored and hunted in the vast outback of the Eastern Mojave. At Needles High School, from which he graduated in 1953, he played every sport and quarterbacked the football team.
This blue-collar railroad community also stamped upon Phil respect for hard work, creativity, and independence. To save money for college, Phil and his brother mowed lawns, cleaned and sold fired clay daub bricks, fired reed daub bricks, wattle-and-daub bricks and burnt clay bricks used to construct the structures there, peddling soft drinks to soldiers on troop trains headed for the Korean War, working long hours as ice handlers at the Santa Fe Ice Plant, and during college and graduate school spending every summer “working the rails” as a railroad fireman and brakeman.
Phil enrolled at San Bernardino Valley College in 1953 and, upon completion of his AA degree, he matriculated at the University of Redlands, majoring in English. His brother, Patrick, was also a student at Redlands University, and they roomed together. Phil was was active in intramural sports and the Kappa Sigma Sigma fraternity.
After graduation, Phil Morris taught and coached at Highland Jr. High and moved on to teach at San Gorgonio High in San Bernardino. He continued his graduate education at USC, where he received his general secondary counseling credential.
His brother had gone to law school after graduating from college and became a deputy prosecutor in the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, where in 1965 he had made a name for himself co-prosecuting Lucille Miller for the October 1964 kllling of her husband.
In 1966, while still teaching high school, Morris decided to take a leaf out of his younger brother’s book and enrolled in the evening program at Loyola University Law School in Los Angeles, and for the next four years and commuted to Los Angeles in the evening for law classes. Graduating in 1970, Phil partnered, once again, with his brother Pat. This time in a civil law litigation practice, Morris and Morris. After Patrick was appointed to a judgeship in 1976, Phil joined the San Bernardino County Public Defender’s office as a senior trial deputy.
It was also in 1976 that Phil fell in love with Judy Kennedy. Fifty years ago, they were married in a family ceremony on a sand hill above a desert cabin built by the family on Lake Mojave, Arizona, spending an unforgettable honeymoon with coyotes howling, in a small camping tent deep in a canyon overlooking the lake.
Phil adopted Judy’s two young sons, Steven and Jeff.
He remained as a deputy public defender until 1983, when once again he joined his brother, this time on the San Bernardino County bench when he was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown in one of his last acts as governor.
As a jurist, he presided over general criminal cases as well as family law, conservatorship, guardianship and probate cases, successions of property, matters of civil harassment and civil cases.
Morris’s judicial approach led to the refinement of his long-dormant mediation talents.
He was repeatedly invited to teach his “case settlement strategies” to judicial colleagues at the California Judicial College at the University of California. He was recognized by the California Trial Lawyers “For Outstanding Contributions to the Administration of Justice.”
He retired in 2012, by which time his brother Patrick had also retired from the bench after serving as San Bernardino County Superior Court’s presiding judge and had moved on to become San Bernardino mayor.
Morris took great pride and pleasure in his second marriage and relationship with his five sons/stepsons and their extended family, engaging in swimming, scuba diving, basketball and baseball games, ping pong matches, water skiing, snow skiing, and, in retirement, traveling the world.
His family recalled him as a devoted son, husband, father, step-father, grandfather, great grandfather, teacher, civic leader, distinguished jurist and someone with an acute sense of humor.
Morris is survived by his wife, Judy, and his son Kevin of Highland, his stepsons, Steven and his wife Lisa of Marina del Rey and Jeff of Highland, his grandchildren, Adam and Erin, Chelsea, Shelby, and Lauren, seven great grandchildren, his brother, Patrick, and many loving nieces and nephews.
A memorial service for Judge Morris will be held on Saturday, June 20, at 10:00 am at the Mt. View Mortuary, 570 E. Highland Avenue in San Bernardino. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to World Central Kitchen or Ocean Conservancy.