A retired judge and his last defendant follow up on cases that were dismissed due to technicalities.
Cast:Brian Keith , Daniel Hugh Kelly , Joe Santos , John Hancock , Mary Jackson , Ed Bernard , Michael Swan , Daphne Reid , Wyatt Johnson , Gerry Gibson , Rick Fitts , Jonathan Banks , Beau Starr , Faye Grant , Steve Lawrence , Marilyn Jones , Stephen Elliott , Molly Cheek
A race-car hero is under pressure: an amateur he was drag-racing lies critically injured, and the mob that finances him is upset at his lackluster racing record.
Mccormick wants to go to Atlantic City, and Hardcastle comes with him. They go see a man Sonny Daye, who McCormick claims is his father. Later they discover that Daye is a criminal, and some people want him to do a job but he refuses, so they grab McCormick to make him.
When the judge goes to a convention, thieves take the opportunity to steal the contents of Gulls Way.
Hardcastle's sister-in-law turns up something big with her surveillance project for a police-procedures course.
When Hardcastle and McCormick return home from the funeral of McCormick's former girl friend, they listen to a message from her on their answering machine and learn she's alive.
A mentally unbalanced woman with an obsession for older men finds her self attracted to Hardcastle when he appears on a court TV show.
After an argument with the judge, McCormick takes a posh sales job that cost his predecessor his life.
Persistence could prove fatal for a payroll clerk who's complaining that the city is paying 10 police officers no longer on the force.
Hardcastle's niece protesting the proposed destruction of a popular college bar not only puts her in the spotlight, but also in danger.
A gunrunner frames a Christmas present for the judge: a murder rap.
The associates of a singer long thought to be dead are making a killing on his music rights, so when they discover the singer's alive, they decide to rectify the situation.
A rash of break-ins in the area prompts Hardcastle's neighbors to organize a neighborhood crime watch.
A friend of Hardcastle's, a lawyer dies. At the funeral, he catches his young wife with another man. He talks to his friend's partner who was forced out of the practice by the wife and he tells Hardcastle the wife was only interested in his money. Hardcastle learns the man died while at some health spa for the elderly. So he goes there as a client and McCormick goes as a trainer who puts Hardcastle through the wringer.
There's nothing funny about the apparent suicide of an ex-con comedian whose girl friend jilted the owner of a comics' showcase club.
The judge's visiting aunts are a pair of snoop sisters who overhear a murder plot and refuse to leave until Hardcastle sees the matter through.
A hotel mogul's death reunites Hardcastle with a former movie star he once planned to marry, and involves both of them in the subsequent murder of a reporter.
Returning from New Mexico with $20,000 in racing winnings, McCormick and Hardcastle are waylaid by a bank robber and his girl.
McCormick and a cop he dislikes grudgingly team up to give the judge the perfect birthday present: the continued incarceration of a vindictive killer who's about to be released.
The judge discovers that both surf punks and unregenerate Nazis have an interest in his private beach.
Two cops kill a known drug smuggler. The son of an old friend of Hardcastle's pulls him over and asks for help in speaking to the commissioner about it, but the commissioner isn't accepting his calls. When Hardcastle brings him and Lt. Frank Harper to the meet to speak to Rafael, they find him dead. So they send McCormick in undercover as a police officer.
A man who was charged with armed robbery 15 years ago, whose trial Hardcastle presided over, is released when the true culprit a friend of his, makes a dying confession. The man seeks out Hardcastle, because Hardcastle wouldn't allow evidence that would have cleared him. Hardcastle tells him, he can't give him back the years he lost. But offers to help get back on his feet by getting him a try out with a baseball team, it seems he was a star baseball player when he was arrested. At the same time Hardcastle looks into something his friend said before he died--that he was paid to frame him. So Hardcastle tries to see if it's true.
A fleeing murder witness leaves her two kids on the judge's doorstep