Monday, April 29, 2002
Page 1
Dodson, Reichert Elected Superior Court Commissioners
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Los Angeles Superior Court research attorney William Dodson and State Bar Court Judge Stanford Reichert have been elected Superior Court commissioners, a court official said Friday.
Dodson and Reichert edged out Referee Jane Godfrey in a runoff election, which became necessary when Diana Summerhayes was the only candidate to achieve a majority in voting that concluded earlier this month.
The new commissioners succeed Louis Head, who retired March 4, and Michael Price, who stepped down March 11. Balloting will conclude next month to fill three more seats, left vacant by the March 31 retirements of Linda Elliott, Jeffrey Castner, and David Stephens.
Dodson and Reichert were favored to win, as they were the highest-ranked candidates, as determined by the court’s evaluating panel. The more than 400 Superior Court judges who do the voting are not required to follow the ranking order adopted by the panel, but have consistently done so since the present candidate list was nominated last fall.
Dodson was a Pasadena senior deputy city attorney before going to work for the court. Reichert was appointed to a three-year term on the State Bar Court last year after serving for nearly two years as judicial staff counsel in the San Bernardino Superior Court’s Rancho Cucamonga courthouse and is a former civil litigator.
The result leaves Godfrey, a referee at Children’s Court in Monterey Park, as the highest-ranked candidate in the upcoming election, followed by Santa Monica lawyer Michael Levanas, Deputy Federal Public Defender Richard Novak, Sherman Oaks practitioner Michael Convey, veteran child-support enforcement lawyer Nicholas Taubert; Referee Marilyn Mackel, Deputy Public Defender Mark Zuckman, Referee Stephen Marpet, Referee Guillermina Byrne, Deputy District Attorney Roger Ito, and H. Don Christian, a Covina lawyer who was a candidate for an open Superior Court seat in the March 5 primary.
Copyright 2002, Metropolitan News Company