6 Named as Judges to Tackle Backlog

Gov. George Deukmejian named six members of the legal community as Orange County Superior and Municipal Court judges on Friday, helping to ease concern over a growing backlog in the county’s courts.

The appointments fill three new Superior Court positions that were among five created in 1987 by the state Legislature but that had not yet been filled. It is uncertain when the remaining two vacancies will be filled, a governor’s spokesman said.

Named as Superior Court judges were: Jonathan H. Cannon, 41, of Garden Grove, and Dennis S. Choate, 42, of Orange, each of whom has been serving as a Municipal Court judge; and Eileen C. Moore, 45, of Long Beach, an attorney in Newport Beach. They will earn $84,765 a year.

Also tapped by Deukmejian as Municipal Court judges were: Frank S. Fasel, 50, of San Juan Capistrano, who now serves as a court-appointed commissioner in Superior Court; Richard F. Toohey, 39, of Irvine, a local deputy district attorney; and James H. Poole, 45, of Santa Ana, an attorney in Tustin.

Fasel and Poole will work out of the Municipal Court branch in Westminster and Toohey in Newport Beach. They will receive an annual salary of $77,409.

Each of the governor’s six judicial appointments is a registered Republican.

Phillip E. Cox, presiding judge of the Superior Court, said upon the naming of his three latest colleagues: “We’re delighted by these appointments. They’re all very fine selections.”

Out of a confidential candidates’ list that he estimated in the hundreds, Cox said Cannon, Choate and Moore “were front-runners all along, based on their knowledge of the law, their experience and their reputations. They’re all just outstanding people.”

Cannon and Choate, as Municipal Court judges with broad experience on the bench, “could start doing Superior Court work tomorrow. They’re very well qualified to start helping us out immediately,” Cox said in an interview. He expects the two to assume their new posts next week.

Moore may need more time to fulfill her private-practice obligations, Cox said.

Cannon and Choate were on vacation Friday and unavailable for comment. Both men were named to the Municipal Court in 1987 after having served as county prosecutors.

Cannon, a converted Republican who in 1985 abandoned what he termed the “leftist” policies of the Democratic Party, also served as mayor of Garden Grove from 1980 to 1987. Moore said in an interview that her appointment came as a “delightful surprise. . . . I didn’t have a clue this was going to happen, and I’m just very, very excited.”

Active in a wide range of civil litigation, Moore is perhaps best known publicly for having represented a fired KDOC-TV employee who won a $256,000 wrongful termination award in 1987 after charging that he was fired for refusing to use phony viewer ratings in his sales pitch.

The appointments of Cannon, Choate and Moore give the Superior Court a total of 57 judges--still far short of the number that local judicial officials say they need to offset a record number of criminal and civil cases now clogging the courts.

A state panel that advised the governor on judicial matters has estimated that Orange County would need 72 judge positions--or 15 more than it now has even after Friday’s appointments--to adequately meet its workload. The court now has a backlog of thousands of cases, and the cases can wait years before reaching trial.

“This is certainly a step in the right direction,” Cox said, “but we’re going to have to wait and see just how much these new judges will help. We still certainly need more.”

Orange County Bar Assn. President Michael H. Gazin said in an interview: “I’m delighted that the governor has decided to appoint three Superior Court positions, and I’m hopeful now that we’ll get the remaining two (created under the 1987 legislation) very quickly. . . . This will help in our problems with the case backlogs, but it’s certainly not a cure.”

The local bar association in March sued the state over its failure to provide more local judges, charging that local citizens have effectively been denied access to justice.