California associate justice accused of sexually harassing colleague

Jeffrey Johnson, photo credit: Wikipedia

Jeffrey Johnson, photo credit: Wikipedia

An associate justice in the Second Appellate District faces accusations that he sexually harassed a colleague on the California bench, one of several alleged incidents being investigated by a judicial commission. 

The Commission on Judicial Performance at California State Bar Court in downtown Los Angeles is investigating allegations that JeffreyJohnson, an associate justice appointed a decade ago, sexually harassed more than two dozen women during the past 18 years, reports The Recorder at law.com.

Second District Court of Appeal Justice Victoria Chaney told the commission that Johnson suggested they have an affair and accused him of groping her, The Recorder reports.

Johnson’s lawyer, Reg Vitek, challenged details of Chaney’s testimony and wondered why she didn’t tell Johnson to stop his behavior and failed to immediately report him.

Chaney said she was convinced to report Johnson “after she began to hear complaints from other women,” The Recorder reports. 

The hearing is expected to last a month. Johnson faces 10 counts of misconduct, “including sexual harassment, misconduct and drunken behavior unbecoming of a judge,” The Recorder reports. 

 

California federal judge blocks Trump birth control coverage rules in 13 states

Photo credit: AP File Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, as reported by AP on 1/13/19.

Photo credit: AP File Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, as reported by AP on 1/13/19.

According to the AP, on Sunday, 1/13/19, Judge Haywood Gilliam of California granted a request for a preliminary injunction by California, 12 other states and Washington, D.C.,  to block Trump administration rules, which would allow more employers to opt out of providing women with no-cost birth control. According to the report, “The plaintiffs sought to prevent the rules from taking effect as scheduled today while a lawsuit against them moved forward… But Gilliam limited the scope of the ruling to the plaintiffs, rejecting their request that he block the rules nationwide.”

Alameda County court provides links — with redactions — to settlements

Justice Marsha Slough, Associate Justice of the California Fourth District Court of Appeal, led the workgroup tasked with amending the rules of court to clarify that any settlement agreements involving judicial officers are publicly disclosable. Photo credit: California Courts website

Justice Marsha Slough, Associate Justice of the California Fourth District Court of Appeal, led the workgroup tasked with amending the rules of court to clarify that any settlement agreements involving judicial officers are publicly disclosable. Photo credit: California Courts website

The Alameda County Superior Court in California agreed to pay an employee $175,000 in a 2017 settlement. In another instance, in 2016, the court settled for $26,600 to resolve a charge of harassment.

These and other public records are available at a page on the Alameda County Superior Court website. This is the product of a rule change in the California judiciary on May 24, when the California Judicial Council revised the rules of court “to clarify that any settlement agreements involving judicial officers for which public funds were spent in payment of the settlement must be disclosed if requested, including agreements related to complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination,” the state’s judicial website reported.

The Recorder at law.com reported on June 8, “Two weeks after California’s judiciary leaders ordered more transparency in disclosing taxpayer-funded settlements of judicial wrongdoing, most courts have offered the same response: We don’t have anything to report.”

Two appellate courts — the Second and the Sixth — and more than half of the trial courts told the publication that they had no responsive records to release.

“One court, however, took a different tack,” the Recorder reported. “Alameda County Superior Court unveiled a page on its website Friday that contains links to what court officials said are all ‘documents reflecting the resolution of claims or litigation — from Jan. 1, 2010, to the present, involving the court, its employees, and/or its judicial officers.’”

The Recorder acknowledged that the blacked-out portions of the documents often left questions. “The redactions and limited information in the documents makes it unclear if the court ever paid an employee to settle claims of sexual harassment or other misconduct by a judicial officer,” the publication reported.

CA Court Interpreter Funding Boost Key to Access to Justice

In states like California where roughly 44 percent of residents speak a language other than English, court interpreters are a key component to reasonably equitable justice. Just last week, we noted the backlog of California immigration cases had trumped 500,000 making court interpreters a sought after commodity.

The LA Times Reports (8/9/16): Aldo Waykam, a Mayan language interpreter, meets recently with Vinicio Nicolas, 15, outside the federal immigration court in Anaheim before Vinicio's asylum hearing. Vinicio speaks Kanjobal, the language used in his village in the highlands of Guatemala. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

The LA Times Reports (8/9/16): Aldo Waykam, a Mayan language interpreter, meets recently with Vinicio Nicolas, 15, outside the federal immigration court in Anaheim before Vinicio’s asylum hearing. Vinicio speaks Kanjobal, the language used in his village in the highlands of Guatemala. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

Earlier this month, the LA Times reported extensively on the challenge of Border Kids whose native language is Mayan.  Many of these kids are coming in from countries such as Guatemala to escape gang violence epidemic with the drug cartels.

They report, “Spoken by almost 80,000 people in mostly rural municipalities in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, Kanjobal is common in places like Santa Eulalia… but rare everywhere else.”

As with other court funding issues; however, funding has been short. The shortages have real consequences, according to the Times Report, “The shortage of interpreters is leading to a host of issues. Often, judges delay immigration hearings until one is found. At times, asylum seekers are deported even if they have a strong case because a qualified interpreter cannot be found in time. And unlike in immigration court, interpreters aren’t provided for free during asylum hearings.”

Gov. Jerry Brown just signed into law the California budget which includes nearly a 10 percent increase in funds for court interpreters, Slator.com reports, bringing the total over $103 million. This is a major development considering the Justice Index placed California in 30th place out of 52 for language access in its 2016 report.

The money isn’t going into a vacuum either, it appears. The reporter notes, “The numbers are huge. A 2015 report by the Judicial Council of California showed that court interpreters in the state provided a total of 254,000 service days from 2012–13.”

As other states struggle with the Border Kids crisis, court interpreter funding will likely become an ever present issue demanding more attention.

California budget raid jeopardizes Modesto courthouse construction funding

A decision by California lawmakers to raid $1.4 billion from the judicial system during the budget crisis is having a direct impact on a $267 million courthouse construction project in Modesto, according to the ModBee. With 23 courthouse construction projects in the works across the state, the budget raid could have implications well beyond the city borders.

As budgets have become constrained, courthouses have closed, forcing existing courthouses to renovate to accommodate the influx of new cases. Brandi Christensen, facilities support service manager for Stanislaus County Superior Court told the Bee, “We don’t have an inch to move. Our courtrooms are packed every day.”

In addition to lack of space, many courthouses have fallen into deep disrepair from age. In the case of the Modesto courthouse, the Bee reports, “The most modern part of the current courthouse — which houses the courtrooms — was built in 1960. The other half of the courthouse was built in 1871 and remodeled in 1939. The courthouse has no holding cells for inmates, who are kept in jury rooms before their court appearances.”

The Judicial Council of California’s Court Facilities Advisory Committee met on June 28th in San Francisco to go over courthouse construction funding, and found it is coming up short. Very short. The Council directed the staff to develop funding recommendations, in concert with  the Department of Finance, in advance of their next meeting August 4th.

We’ll continue to follow the story, and you can get caught up with full details at the full Modesto Bee article here.

California Ruling Allows ‘Default’ Homeowners To Sue Over Foreclosure

Experts said it’s highly unlikely that former homeowners could unravel their foreclosures and win back their houses. Above, advocacy group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment holds a news conference in Carson in 2012. (Photo Credit: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Experts said it’s highly unlikely that former homeowners could unravel their foreclosures and win back their houses. Above, advocacy group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment holds a news conference in Carson in 2012. (Photo Credit: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

In a landmark decision, the California Supreme Court has ruled that some former homeowners can sue for wrongful foreclosure even if they were in default on their loans. A Los Angeles Times story quotes Katherine Porter, a law professor at UC Irvine and a former monitor for a national settlement over foreclosure abuses: “They opened the courthouse doors.”

During the recent home foreclosure crisis, tales of “robo-signing” emerged when employees of mortgage firms signed off on foreclosure documents even though they had no authority to do so. Troubled borrowers were often bounced around to various employees who gave different answers. The court ruled, in effect, that homeowners facing the resulting chaos may have been wrongly evicted – previously, courts had ruled that those people had no standing because they were in default on their loans.

It remains unclear how many people will be effected, but experts told the Times that it might be tens of thousands. California now joins other states where such challenges are allowed, including Ohio, Massachusetts and Texas. Read the Times story here: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-foreclosure-ruling-20160302-story.html

IVP Conference: CA Courts Filling With Out-of-State Cases

A recent conference hosted by the Independent Voter Project in California hit upon an issue we’ve been reporting on repeatedly here at CCM. California courts are filling with a backlog of out-of-state cases, as class action lawsuits fill the courts. This, in turn, is buckling the limited resources of the court system, leaving California residents either without nearby courts, or pushing their cases to the back of the line. 

The conference focused on business interests, specifically, but a recent blog they posted noted that businesses are being impacted, alongside residents:

“The fairly recent development of mass-action lawsuits conglomerate residents of multiple states into one lawsuit. Usually it is filed in California due to plaintiff-friendly court policies. Consequently, California courts are filling up with lawsuits where many plaintiffs are not CA residents and don’t receive adequate legal representation.”

Read more here.

Trangender Issues Loom As New Court-Case Frontier

The Sacramento Bee newspaper has a detailed report about why transgender issues will become the next battle now that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that same-sex couples have a right to marry. From school policy to federal funding, including civil court actions, the impacts will be many.
 
The Bee reports that “… LGBT leaders, following their successful effort to legalize same-sex marriage across the country, say expanding transgender rights is the next boundary in the culture wars. Last month, a coalition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organizations formed to fight the ballot proposal to nullify the bathroom law, calling it a ‘recipe for harassment.'”
 

California, Texas Lead In Immigration Court Delays

It may the one of the few places where Texas does not mind being second to California: immigration case backlog. A Houston Chronicle newspaper report notes that  “… the stack of cases at Texas’ overburdened immigration courts grew by nearly 60 percent since October 2013, bringing the state’s pending cases to a record high of nearly 77,000, making it the largest backlog in the country after California.”
 
The delays are truly staggering, especially for younger people. The Chronicle says “… nationwide it now takes an average of 604 days to process an immigration case, according to an analysis of federal data through April by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. In Houston, where the pending case load grew by 13 percent from late 2013 to nearly 32,000 so far this year, the highest in the state, the delay is 636 days.”
 
That’s to be “processed.” Some cases are taking five years to resolve. The HC explained that “… the long overburdened and underfunded immigration court system has been further overwhelmed by the influx of more than 67,000 unaccompanied Central American children who streamed across the Southwest border in 2014. In response, the Obama administration prioritized their cases and those of other migrants who arrived here last year to deter more from coming.” That means folks waiting years for a day in court might have to wait years longer.
 
(Immigration courts are not criminal courts, but rather an administrative function of the Justice Department and are considered civil cases.) Read more here. 
 
 

2013 Budget Cuts Still Forcing Adjustments For Court Facilities

The Desert Dispatch newspaper reports that the supervising judge for San Bernardino County will implement a reorganizational plan that will expand services at the Barstow Courthouse in order to enable the Victorville Courthouse to take on more criminal cases. The report offers a reminder that “… budget cuts in 2013 shuttered courthouses in Barstow, Big Bear, Needles and Chino. A last-minute reprieve thanks to $1.2 million from state courts reserves allowed one courtroom to stay open in Barstow. The lone courtroom allowed traffic, landlord-tenant, small claims and domestic violence cases to continue to be heard three days a week.”
 
Reporter Mike Lamb writes about one impact of the change “… a state judiciary report that was released in August showed San Bernardino County kept more of its felony cases on the docket after 12 months than any other county in California during fiscal year 2012-13. The report showed that county courtrooms are dealing with massive caseloads.” Adjusting the civil caseload might help with that backlog.