Monday, July 15, 2013
Page 1
Brown Names 11 to Superior Courts, Including Six in Los Angeles
By KENNETH OFGANG, Staff Writer
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Gov. Jerry Brown Friday named 11 new members of superior courts around the state, including six to the Los Angeles Superior Court.
Named to the local court were Assistant U.S. Attorneys Rupa S. Goswami and Curtis Kin, Superior Court Commissioners Nicole C. Bershon and Lloyd C. Loomis, Deputy Alternate Public Defender Beverly L. Bourne, and Deputy District Attorney Teresa T. Sullivan.
Goswami, 46, is co-president of the South Asian Bar Association of Southern California, and will be the first woman of South Asian ancestry to serve as a California judge, the association said.
“This appointment is profound,” Puneet V. Kakkar, the association’s other co-president, said in a statement posted on the group’s website. “Rupa has been a bedrock for the South Asian-American community in Southern California through her leadership, mentorship, and service. She is a trailblazer with respect to the legal issues she tackles and the justice she accomplishes. All of this will only be multiplied now that she is on the bench.”
Peer Recognition
An immigrant from India, Goswami has served as a federal prosecutor for the past 12 years and has been recognized for her work in the areas of child sexual exploitation, environmental crime, and protecting endangered species.
Before becoming a prosecutor, she clerked for Nora Manella, then a U.S. district judge and now a Court of Appeal justice, and for since-deceases Judge Terence T. Evans of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.
A graduate of the University of Chicago and UCLA, Goswami holds both an MBA in finance and a law degree, and is a former civil litigation associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Los Angeles..
She has also been a member of the Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation and adjunct professor of trial advocacy at Loyola Law School. She fills the vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Gary E. Daigh
Bershon, 45, has served as a commissioner since 2011. She served in multiple positions at the Los Angeles Police Department, Office of the Inspector General from 2002 to 2011, including inspector general and assistant inspector general.
She was a Los Angeles deputy city attorney from 1995 to 2002 and an associate at Irell and Manella from 1994 to 1995 and at Sutman Treister and Glatt from 1992 to 1994.
She is a graduate of Princeton University and UCLA School of Law. Bershon fills the vacancy created by the conversion of a court commissioner position last year.
Senior Trial Attorney
Bourne, 54, joined the APD as a senior trial attorney in 2004, after having worked at the Public Defender’s Office, which she joined as a paralegal in 1995. She was admitted to the State Bar in 1996.
She is a graduate of Pepperdine University School of Law and a holds an undergraduate degree from USC. She fills the vacancy created by the conversion of a court commissioner position last year.
Kin, 41, has been the chief of appeals at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California since last year and an assistant U.S. attorney since 2000. He has been an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University Law School since 2003 and was an adjunct professor at USC School of Law in 2004.
Kin was a law clerk for then-Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor from 1999 to 2000 and an associate attorney at Cravath Swaine and Moore from 1997 to 1999. He clerked for Judge Jed S. Rakoff at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from 1996 to 1997.
Kin is a graduate of USC and Stanford Law School, and fills the vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Lyle M. MacKenzie.
Loomis, 66, has served as commissioner since 2009. He was a partner at Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard and Smith from 2006 to 2009 and at Sonnerschein Nath and Rosenthall from 2001 to 2006.
He was senior corporate labor counsel at Arco from 1980 to 1999, an associate at Pepper Hamilton and Scheetz from 1978 to 1980 and an attorney at Caterpillar Inc. from 1976 to 1978. He was an associate at Gage and Tucker from 1972 to 1976 and a labor relations representative at General Motors Fairfax Assembly Plant from 1968 to 1971.
Loomis is a graduate of Columbia University and of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law/ He fills the vacancy created by the conversion of a court commissioner position last year.
Sullivan, 48, has served as deputy district attorney since 1999 and was a trial attorney at the Law Office of Jo Kaplan from 1997 to 1999. She graduated from California State University, Los Angeles and from Loyola Law School.
The governor yesterday also named Francine Zepeda, 59, chief of the Fresno Branch of the Office of the Federal Defender, to the Fresno Superior Court. He tapped Paul D. Herbert, 57, a partner at Frassetto Herbert LLP in Oakland; Michael M. Markman, 41, a partner at Covington & Burling, LLP in San Francisco; and Mark A. McCannon, 43, an Alameda deputy district attorney, for the Alameda Superior Court.
Brown named Marin Superior Court Commissioner Beverly Wood, 56, a judge of that court.
Kin is a Republican; Bershon, Loomis, and Wood are registered decline-to-state; and the other appointees are Democrats. The current salary of a superior court judge is $178,789.
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