Delaney's opinions draw lines on privilege, debt collection and civility

A lawyer given an opponent's privileged emails by a client must stop reading and notify the other side, Justice Thomas A. Delaney wrote this year, extending an ethics rule to documents taken by departing employees.

In Guardian Storage Centers LLC v. Simpson (2026), former executives forwarded company counsel's emails to personal accounts and gave them to their lawyers. An Orange County judge refused to disqualify the firm partly because the executives were intended recipients.

Delaney disagreed. They received the emails "in their capacity as executives of Guardian, not in their individual capacities," he wrote. Under State Comp. Ins. Fund v. WPS Inc. (1999), lawyers receiving apparently privileged material "impermissibly taken from the privilege holder without authorization" must limit review and notify the holder. The panel reversed and ordered reconsideration.

Confirmed in 2022, Delaney seeks retention Nov. 3 for the remaining four years of his predecessor's term.

Statutory text drives other opinions. A homeowner billed for solar power prepaid by the previous owner could sue under California's debt collection law, Delaney held in Hagey v. Solar Service Experts LLC (2023).

The trial court dismissed his claim because he acquired nothing on credit. Delaney reversed, holding that the Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act covers debt "alleged to be due or owing," even when a collector bills the wrong person.

One word decided whether a sitting judge could become San Diego County's public defender. In Washington v. County of San Diego (2025), Judge Michael Washington disputed the county's reading of a 1947 statute requiring candidates to have practiced law for "the year preceding" appointment. Sitting judges cannot practice law.

Washington argued any prior year should qualify. Writing as acting presiding justice, Delaney held that "the" meant the immediately preceding year. "We cannot rewrite the statute under the guise of statutory interpretation," he wrote.

Delaney's concern with lawyers' conduct surfaced in Young v. Hartford (2024), where he criticized an attorney's letter mocking opposing counsel as "the civility police." He didn't sanction the lawyer but wrote that the letter "served only to imperil counsel's interests and those of his clients." He also held that orders suspending a trustee and appointing an interim trustee were not directly appealable.

The Orange County chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates gave Delaney its civility award in 2019.

A 1992 Loyola Law School graduate, Delaney spent more than two decades in civil litigation, defending product liability and mass tort cases and organizations sued over sexual abuse.

Former co-counsel Sean A. Andrade of Andrade Gonzalez LLP described him in a 2022 confirmation letter as a collaborative leader who welcomed ideas from junior associates, coordinated lawyers from both firms and worked late revising motions and preparing for hearings.

During stressful periods, Delaney sang "Everything Is Awesome" from The Lego Movie to cheer up colleagues, Andrade recalled. Leaving for the bench in 2014, Delaney gave 15 colleagues Lego keychains that played the song. Andrade said many still have them.

Andrade also described Delaney as a "great writer with strong emotional intelligence" who would understand the impact of his opinions on litigants and the public.

He was the California Judges Association president in 2020-21. Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Paul M. Marigonda, who also served on the association's executive board, wrote in a 2022 confirmation letter, "Judge Delaney has an impressive ability to take on an issue and prepare a first draft that is so well-crafted, very modest editing is required."

During the pandemic, Delaney expanded remote judicial education and initiated interviews between judicial, executive and legislative leaders.

Delaney has written and co-produced two docufilms with retired Judge Rick Aguirre reenacting landmark Orange County civil rights trials. Doss v. Bernal concerned a 1943 ruling invalidating a racially restrictive covenant. Mendez v. Westminster School District, about a 1946 federal school segregation case, is in post-production, with a script Delaney wrote from trial transcripts.