3 Judges Appointed to Superior Court Positions

Gov. George Deukmejian on Tuesday promoted three San Diego County municipal judges to newly created positions on the county’s Superior Court bench.

Judges Lisa Guy-Schall, Linda Boelhauf Quinn and Ronald Prager were elevated to the new positions, which pay $89,851 a year, Deukmejian’s office announced Tuesday.

Deukmejian, in turn, appointed three San Diego attorneys to fill the vacancies on the lower court bench. The new Municipal Court judges will be Ann Winebrenner Buss, William H. Woodward and Michael B. Orfield. Each will earn $82,054.

Guy-Schall, 36, has the greatest seniority of the three promoted to the Superior Court, having served as a municipal judge since 1985. A 1977 graduate of Western State law school, Guy-Schall was a San Diego County district attorney from 1978 until her 1985 judicial appointment.

Her replacement on the municipal bench will be Buss, 42, a 1980 Western State graduate and partner with the San Diego law firm of Seltzer, Caplan, Wilkins & McMahon.

Quinn, 37, has served on the Municipal Court bench since 1987. She graduated from California Western School of Law in 1977 before joining Platt, Tebbetts & Fitch.

Taking Quinn’s place on the municipal bench will be Woodward, 47, a San Diego County deputy district attorney whose father and grandfather sat on the Superior Court bench in San Joaquin County. Woodward received his law degree from UC San Diego in 1972, and has worked for the district attorney since then.

Prager, 46, Deukmejian’s third appointment to the Superior Court bench, earned his promotion after being made a municipal judge last year.

He began his law career with the San Diego County district attorney’s office after graduating from the University of Southern California law school in 1969. He left San Diego and the district attorney’s office in 1979 to join the state attorney general’s office and the Department of Justice in Sacramento. His last assignment was as chief prosecutor for the attorney general’s Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud before Deukmejian appointed him to the Municipal Court bench in 1988.

Also on Tuesday, Deukmejian appointed Orfield, 40, to the municipal bench to fill a vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Roger J. Cooney.

Orfield’s father, Franklin, recently retired from the San Diego County Superior Court bench after 18 years as a judge.

The younger Orfield graduated from California Western School of Law in 1977 before working two years with the district attorney’s office. He is a partner of Wingert, Grebing, Anello & Brubaker.