Judges and Judiciary
Aug. 14, 2002
Motorcycle-Racing Judge, 58, Loves His Court Job
SAN LUIS OBISPO - Judge Donald G. Umhofer, who enjoys a reputation as an evenhanded jurist with a willing ear, unwinds on weekends by racing motorcycles.
Donald G. Umhofer
Superior Court Judge
San Luis Obispo
Career highlights: Elevated through unification, July 1, 1998; appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown to San Luis Obispo Municipal Court, Jan. 2, 1983, presiding judge 1985, 1990, 1991, 1997; deputy district attorney, San Luis Obispo County district attorney's office, 1981-83; attorney, Law Offices of Richard Carsel, 1978-81; deputy district attorney, Humboldt County district attorney's office, 1974-78; deputy public defender, Humboldt County public defender's office, 1972-74
Law school: Golden Gate University School of Law, 1971
Age: 58
"He refers to them as 'crotch rockets,'" James Maguire of Maguire & Ashbaugh in San Luis Obispo said. "They're the kind of motorcycles that you have to lay down over the gas tank on."
"They're agile and very fast," said Maguire, a former partner and personal friend of the judge.
Also known as "canyon runners," these sports-style motorcycles are capable of going from 0 to 60 mph in less than two seconds.
Umhofer whizzes through the Central Coast wine country on weekend day trips with other racing enthusiasts, Maguire said.
The judge's advancement to the bench also occurred at rocket speed.
Umhofer was 35 when Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him to San Luis Obispo Municipal Court. By 37, he sat as a presiding judge.
"I was young when the governor appointed me," Umhofer said. "So I have broad experience on the bench."
Now 58, the judge presides over a direct civil calendar in San Luis Obispo Superior Court. He was elevated to the Superior Court by unification in 1998.
Umhofer spearheaded both the Municipal Court's and Superior Court's move from a master calendar system to a direct calendar system, which, he maintains, is more efficient.
His administrative passion is implementing security measures at the courthouse. He also chairs the Bench-Bar-Media Committee, which holds semiannual meetings with judges, lawyers and reporters to enhance communication among all three.
Umhofer has a reputation for being a good listener and a fair jurist.
"Umhofer is terrific," said James Duenow, a civil litigator in San Luis Obispo who has tried a handful of cases in front of Umhofer and hasn't always won. "He's smart, fair, works hard and runs a good courtroom.
"He doesn't allow any back-dooring, and he has no emotional foibles - no tantrums."
David Bixby, a family law and criminal defense attorney in Santa Maria, described Umhofer as cordial.
"I've always enjoyed the way he handles his court," Bixby said. "He's reasonable and evenhanded. He's a gentleman."
David Hagan, a civil litigator in Grover Beach, agreed.
"He's been pretty darn easy to work with," Hagan said. "I don't always agree with him, but I've never found him lacking foundation for his rulings.
"He never shoots from the hip, and I sense that he works hard at being completely impartial."
Hagan has had two jury trials in Umhofer's court and many law and motion matters.
"He has a great sense of humor," Hagan said. "He has a way of seeing the irony in things."
Hagan recalled a time when a misdemeanor pro per defendant was explaining why he couldn't make it to jail on time.
"The defendant went through a long explanation about why he couldn't get to jail on time," Hagan said. "When he was finished, Judge Umhofer, in a deadpan voice, said, 'We don't often get people complaining about how hard it is to get in jail.'"
Umhofer said he spends a lot of time settling cases.
"We have a very strong mediation component to our civil calendar," Umhofer said. "It's the cornerstone on which we founded it, and we will do our own mediation."
Litigators may decide to have the sitting judge or another judge in the courthouse help to resolve a dispute.
"All of us are open to hear other people's cases," Umhofer said about the 11 judges, three commissioners and one referee in the San Luis Obispo courthouse.
All cases must go through some form of alternative dispute resolution - whether it's mediation, arbitration or a private judge - before they get to trial, the judge said.
"If they say, 'I don't want to do any of these things,' I say, 'OK, you have to show up at a mandatory settlement conference,'" at which an attempt to resolve a dispute will occur.
Cases get to trial in less than a year in San Luis Obispo, according to Umhofer, who presides over a dozen jury trials a year. Trials typically involve employment disputes, medical malpractice claims and, increasingly, auto-accident personal injury cases, he said.
"Insurance companies are resisting settlements on a lot of soft-tissue auto accident claims," Umhofer said.
Daniel O'Neill, a plaintiffs' personal injury attorney in San Luis Obispo, said Umhofer will modify his rulings if convinced he's wrong.
"He'll have his mind made up about something," O'Neill said, "but if you go in there with a strong objection and a good argument, he'll listen to you. I've had him change his opinion 180 degrees.
"He's always prepared. He reads everything. But I don't think he makes his mind up until he hears everything."
O'Neill also said that juries like Umhofer because he's a skilled trial judge.
"He has a lot of class," O'Neill said. "He's not the type to ram a case through."
James Dexheimer, an insurance defense attorney with Allstate Insurance Co. in Santa Barbara, agreed.
"He's a trial counsel's judge," Dexheimer said, "no doubt about it.
"If counsel are really not of equal competence, he will do his best, while staying in his role, to equal the playing field."
"For example, I had a case, and the opposing counsel really had no idea which BAJI instructions to use," he said, referring to the Book of Approved Jury Instructions. "The judge, to avoid an appealable issue, stepped in on behalf of the court and chose the instructions for the attorney."
Lee Cunningham, a deputy district attorney in San Luis Obispo County, said Umhofer has a good grasp on the law.
Cunningham recalled a complex workers' compensation fraud trial he prosecuted in Umhofer's court.
"His pretrial rulings were fully thought out," Cunningham said. "Even if he ruled the other way, it was because he thought it through and came to a different conclusion than I."
Umhofer claims he has no pet peeves, but Hagan begs to differ.
"I know he doesn't like food in his courtroom," Hagan said. "But other than that, he's a pretty flexible guy."
Umhofer began his legal career as a deputy public defender in Humboldt County in 1972.
"Basically what happened," Umhofer said, "is I followed a friend of mine, John Huffington, to the Humboldt County public defender's office."
Huffington later became a Humboldt County Superior Court judge.
Two years later, Umhofer joined the Humboldt County district attorney's office, where he stayed for four years.
"I left Humboldt County because of the perceived downturn in the economy when they created the Redwood National Park," Umhofer said.
"Also," he said, "I decided I didn't want to work for the fellow who was going to be the next DA."
Umhofer moved to San Luis Obispo and joined Richard Carsel, who had the county's public defender contract.
Maguire, who joined Carsel at the same time, said Umhofer is a very intelligent person and a "terrific trial lawyer."
"He's kind of a serious, studious guy," Maguire said, "which makes him very effective in trial because he is a detail person."
Maguire recalled that Umhofer represented two defendants in a death penalty case in 1979. People v. Mroczko, 10853 (San Luis Obispo Super. Ct., filed Sept. 1978).
The defendants, Richard Mroczko and Thomas Brindle, California Men's Colony inmates, were convicted of asphyxiating a third inmate, Jay Love, who was found dead in his cell, a metal coat hanger wrapped around his neck.
"The co-defendants made a pact to sink or swim together," Maguire said. "They wanted one lawyer to defend both of them so their interests wouldn't be separated."
Mroczko and Brindle each received life without the possibility of parole for Love's murder.
On appeal, the state Supreme Court held that the defendants had been deprived of their constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel because of potential and actual conflicts of interest that prejudiced the defendants' interests. The Supreme Court reversed the judgments. People v. Mroczko, 35 Cal.3d 86 (1983).
In 1980, when Carsel decided to focus on civil law, he gave up the public defender's contract to Maguire and Patricia Ashbaugh, also a partner in the firm. When the firm split, Umhofer stayed with Carsel.
"We had a general law practice," Umhofer said. "We handled divorces, personal injury cases, small-town stuff."
In 1981, Umhofer decided to return to the criminal law trenches and joined the district attorney's office in San Luis Obispo.
Two years later, he applied for a judicial position.
"There were a couple of openings on the court, so I filed a résumé with the governor," Umhofer said.
Umhofer has presided over felony trials, as well as delinquency and dependency matters in juvenile court, and has managed a direct civil trial calendar.
"The only thing I haven't done yet is probate," he said.
In addition to motorcycle racing, Umhofer runs up to 20 miles a week and participates in 8-kilometer and 10-kilometer runs to keep himself in shape.
Last Thanksgiving, he placed 61st in San Luis Obispo's annual eight-mile run, a fund-raiser to combat hunger.
"I ran eight miles through the vineyards on Thanksgiving Day," he said, nonchalantly.
He also enjoys backpacking. Every Columbus Day weekend for the past decade, he has organized a four-day trek in the Sierra Mountains with his buddies.
Umhofer met his future wife, Betsy Robertshaw Umhofer, in South Bend, Ind., where he spent his undergraduate years at the University of Notre Dame. His wife, a graduate of St. Mary's College in South Bend, is the district representative for U.S. Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara.
The Umhofers have two adult sons, Matthew and Peter Umhofer, and an adult daughter, Bryn Schmitt.
Umhofer was born in St. Louis, Mo., and raised in Chicago, with a younger brother.
His father was an insurance claim supervisor for Safeco Insurance Co. in Chicago, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Los Angeles. His mother was a middle-school math teacher.
Umhofer earned his bachelor's degree in liberal studies from the University of Notre Dame because he enjoyed reading about Western civilization.
"I read all the great books from Plato to Einstein," he said, "but I always wanted to be a lawyer.
"My father knew lots of lawyers from his insurance company work. I respected them and thought they had good lives and did good things."
Umhofer began his law studies at the University of Notre Dame Law School but completed them at San Francisco's Golden Gate University School of Law in 1971.
"Nobody should live in South Bend, Indiana, for more than four years," he said, speaking about the misery of the city's climatic changes.
Umhofer likes living in the Central Coast and lives in the same home he purchased 24 years ago.
During his two-decade tenure on the bench, Umhofer has served four terms as the presiding judge of Municipal Court, which gives him the credentials to be a faculty member of the Center for California Judicial Education and Research, the educational branch of the office of the courts.
The judge helps to train incoming presiding judges throughout the state in a weeklong program on responsibility and problem-solving techniques.
Umhofer believes the biggest problem facing the justice system today is its treatment of the mentally ill.
"There's a lack of resources," he said, "and we get a lot of what we call PC 29650 from the state hospital - people who have finished their term of imprisonment but who suffer from a mental disorder and are dangerous."
Umhofer said the court is inundated with hundreds of these cases from Atascadero State Hospital. The hospital was, at one time, the largest hospital for the criminally insane in the world, according to Deputy District Attorney Cunningham.
"We have adequate judicial resources to handle these cases," Umhofer said, "but they're burdensome to the system and part of the mental health issue in California."
The solution, Umhofer said, is for the state to funnel more money into local programs for treatment.
"The system needs some leverage over the mentally ill who are on the street in order to provide treatment," he said. "It's been addressed in the Legislature in the past couple of years. People sought better ability to apply to courts for treatment for people who don't want it."
Umhofer acknowledges, however, that there is a lack of government funds.
"Consequently," he said, "the mentally ill people end up in the criminal system and get treatment in jail."
Umhofer plans to remain a judge for many more years.
"I have a few years until I'm 60," he said. "At such time as I retire, I want to sit on assignment and do some private judging, either by way of arbitration or mediation in San Luis Obispo.
"I love being a judge."
Here are some of Judge Umhofer's recent cases and the lawyers involved:
• People v. Nyujen, F282032
For the prosecution: Lee Cunningham, San Luis Obispo district attorney's office
For the defense: Ilah Funke-Bilu, San Luis Obispo; and Linden Mackaoui, San Luis Obispo
• Brown v. Smith, CV99-0671
For the plaintiff: M. Scott Radovich, San Luis Obispo
For the defendant: Mark Connely, Bonne Bridges Mueller O'Keefe & Nichols, San Luis Obispo
• People v. Kness, F278122
For the prosecution: David Pomeroy, San Luis Obispo district attorney's office
For the defense: Paul Phillips, Pismo Beach
• Shetler v. Cal. Poly, San Luis Obispo CV99-0910
For the plaintiff: David Hagan, Grover Beach 805.773.5489
For the defendant: David Juhnke, Sinsheimer, Schiebelhut & Baggett, San Luis Obispo
• Bridges v. Ormonde Construction, CV-990981
For the plaintiff: James Deunow, San Luis Obispo
For the defendant: Richard I. Phillips, Phillips & Associates, San Luis Obispo
Tamara Scott
For reprint rights or to order a copy of your photo:
Email
Jeremy_Ellis@dailyjournal.com
for prices.
Direct dial: 213-229-5424
Send a letter to the editor:
Email: letters@dailyjournal.com