Newsom makes 3 appellate nominations, 7 judge appointments

Gov. Gavin Newsom nominated two new 2nd District Court of Appeal justices and recommended promotion of a third to presiding justice on Monday. He also appointed seven Superior Court judges in three counties.

Newsom nominated Justice Brian M. Hoffstadt as presiding justice of the 2nd District's Division 5, to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Laurence Rubin. Newsom nominated Los Angeles County Superior Court Judges Michelle C. Kim to Division 1, and Anne K. Richardson to Division 2 of the 2nd District court.

Newsom's superior court appointments are: for Alameda County, San Francisco Deputy Public Defender Rozlynn Silvaggio Bauman, Supervising Deputy Attorney General Chad A. Stegeman, Oakland Senior Deputy City Attorney Han N. Tran and Assistant San Francisco County District Attorney Kevin T. Wong; for Los Angeles County, Rosen Saba LLP partner Elizabeth L. Bradley and Deputy Attorney General Sally Espinoza; and for Ventura County, Superior Court Commissioner Russel-Paul H. Kawai.

Hoffstadt was appointed to Division 2 of the 2nd District by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2014 and to the Los Angeles County Superior Court by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2010. A first-in-his-class UCLA law graduate, he had been a Jones Day partner, an assistant U.S. attorney, senior counsel to Office of Policy Development for the U.S. Department of Justice, and special counsel to the Federal Communications Commission.

Hoffstadt has been described as a "first to pounce" justice, a practice some attorneys have speculated he may have picked up from clerking for the late former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

"What I try to do is to focus them on the things that are bothering or concerning me," Hoffstadt said in a 2018 Daily Journal interview. "Then, you'll notice, I step back and let them talk about whatever they want, but I want to make sure that I have the opportunity to get the benefit of their insight on the issues that I think are the turning points of the case."

He said in the interview that after these exchanges, "probably half of the time I will go back and make some substantive changes to the opinion. ... It oftentimes changes the rationale or the reasoning."

Hoffstadt acknowledged his Supreme Court clerkship was instrumental in forming his perception of the law and how he approaches judiciary responsibilities. For example, Hoffstadt's opinions often lay out the context and resolution of a case in the first paragraph, something he said he learned from his work with O'Connor.

"We're publishing to fill in a little gap," he said. "I think as long as the reader can understand what the broad tapestry of the law is and what little piece of that we're going to deal with, it's helpful to move right to that point."

Before her appointment to the superior court in Los Angeles in 2018, Richardson, a Stanford Law School graduate, represented litigants in major cases involving claims of human and consumer rights violations as a public interest lawyer at Hadsell Stormer Richardson & Renick LLP. Later she was director of the Consumer Law Project at Public Counsel.

While at Hadsell Stormer in the early 2000s, Richardson worked on a landmark case brought under the alien tort statute involving claims of human rights violations by villagers in Myanmar. They claimed that the military subjected them to forced labor, murder, rape and torture during construction of a gas pipeline, a project Unocal Corp. and its parent company, Union Oil Co. of California, were involved in. It eventually settled after eight years of litigation.

Richardson was nominated to fill the vacancy that would be created if Hoffstadt's promotion is confirmed by the Commission on Judicial Appointments, which also must confirm the other two appellate court nominations.

Kim, a UCLA Law School graduate appointed to the superior court in 2018, spent her career as a deputy public defender and alternate public defender in Los Angeles County.

"In my view, it's imperative we keep our view on the people on the margin. That's the bellwether for the health of a society," Kim said in a 2019 Daily Journal interview. "If we don't pay attention to those at the margins, the ripple effects are great." Her nomination, if confirmed, will fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Victoria D. Chaney.