Joseph A. Wapner, a retired California judge whose flinty-folksy style of resolving disputes on the show "The People's Court" helped spawn an entire genre of courtroom-based reality television with no-nonsense jurists and often clueless litigants, died Feb. 26 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 97.

"The People's Court," which the silver-haired Wapner hosted from 1981 to 1993, was a syndicated half-hour show that turned private arbitration of small-claims cases into highly engrossing entertainment.Within a few years of its debut, the program regularly attracted 20 million viewers. One measure of its success was a Washington Post survey in 1989 that showed 54 percent of Americans could identify Judge Wapner compared with 9 percent who could name the chief justice of the United States, William H. Rehnquist.Wapner so permeated the popular culture that he became a reference point in the Oscar-winning film "Rain Man" (1988), in which Dustin Hoffman's autistic character is addicted to "The People's Court."The parties, selected from the dockets of Los Angeles-area small-claims courts, agreed to have their matters settled outside a normal court of law and to sign a legally binding arbitration contract. Each litigant was paid about $250 to appear on TV.The courtroom set - the only fictional component of the show - was presided over by a seen-it-all judge who had spent 18 years on the bench of the Los Angeles Superior Court and brooked little tolerance for unpreparedness and interruptions.When a litigant told him, "I'm not through, your honor," Wapner replied, "Well, now you are."The judge decided that a litigant who bought three "Cartier" watches out of a cigar box in a restaurant for $75 got exactly what he purchased.Although he could be gruff, Wapner also displayed a sense of fairness in Solomon-like conundrums.In a matter involving disputed ownership of a dog between two boys, it was revealed that a third party had improperly taken the dog from the first boy and sold it to the second. Wapner gave the dog back to the first boy and awarded $200 to the second for his careful temporary guardianship.Wapner's influence, Thompson added, extended not only to imitators who followed - Judy Sheindlin of "Judge Judy," "Judge Mills Lane," "Judge Joe Brown," or even "Judge" Julie on Playboy TV's "Sex Court" - but also to TV personalities such as Dr. Phil, who often viewed guests as squabbling children in need of a stern talking.