Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Page 3
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Doi Retires
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David I. Doi has retired.
Doi, 60, stepped down March 6 after being a judge for more than 23 years. He was appointed to the Los Angeles Municipal Court by then-Gov. Jerry Brown just before Brown left office in 1983, after joining with other members of the Japanese American Bar Association to encourage the appointment of more judges of Japanese descent.
He became a Superior Court judge through unification in 2000.
Doi had recently been sitting in juvenile court in Compton. He had been reassigned to dependency cases at the Edelman Children’s Court in Monterey Park but retired without taking up the assignment.
He previously heard civil cases downtown.
A native Californian—he was born in a World War II relocation camp for Japanese Americans—Doi graduated from Los Angeles High School, where he played football. He earned degrees from what is now California State University, Los Angeles in 1969 and from what is now Loyola Law School in 1973.
He began his career as a deputy public defender, but was in private practice from 1975 until his appointment to the bench. Most of his private experience was as a sole practitioner, with an office in Little Tokyo, although he had a short-lived partnership with his sister, Kathryn Doi Todd, now a justice of this district’s Court of Appeal.
Copyright 2006, Metropolitan News Company