Judge Given Disability Pay of $56,002 for ‘Stage Fright’

A former San Diego Municipal Court judge who resigned from the bench because of intense “stage fright” has been awarded a disability pension currently worth $56,002 a year, court records reveal.

Former Judge Joseph K. Davis, 44, will receive the retirement pension for the rest of his life. The amount of the pension is keyed to the annual salary paid an active Municipal Court judge, so as the salary goes up, so will the pension.

Davis won the pension by settling a lawsuit that followed a lengthy and complicated fight with a state administrative agency over the severity of the psychiatric problems he suffered during most of his eight years on the bench, according to court records. The agency was among the parties agreeing to the settlement.

The “stage fright,” complicated by “depression with anxiety,” was so severe it interfered with Davis’ ability to perform routine judicial tasks and required him to take “inordinate” amounts of tranquilizers to get through the job, according to Davis’ lawsuit. Often, it caused him to miss work entirely, the suit said.

While Davis tried to hide the problem, it worsened, the suit said. He began experiencing panic in any public setting where he was expected to speak. Eventually, his ability to do his job was “totally impaired,” so he quit and applied for the pension, the suit said.

Davis could not be reached for comment. A source close to him said he was still in San Diego, but not working.

His San Diego attorney, John Mitchell, declined comment Tuesday on the case.

Vista Superior Court Judge Kevin Midlam, who initially ruled in Davis’ favor in the case and then approved the settlement that ended the dispute, did not return a phone call Tuesday to his chambers.

The legal fight in Davis’ case developed after the state Commission on Judicial Performance, which oversees the retirement benefits and discipline of state judges, initially approved his pension application--and then denied it.

Davis stepped down from the bench on Jan. 1, 1989, the final day of a six-year term. He had been appointed to the bench in April, 1980, by former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. and elected to the post in 1982.

Before he decided not to seek reelection in 1988, he had become embroiled in a personal problem. In November, 1986, his former girlfriend accused him of beating her. Prosecutors filed a misdemeanor battery charge, but the woman declined to testify at Davis’ trial in February, 1987, and the charge was dismissed after a jury deadlocked, 11 to 1, for acquittal.

The episode appeared to doom Davis’ reelection chances and he did not run again.

But in the lawsuit Davis filed last summer in Vista Superior Court against the judicial performance commission asking for his disability pension, he made no mention of the battery charge. Instead, he detailed the progression of his psychiatric difficulties.

Before he became a judge, Davis had been a lawyer for seven years, practicing with the Legal Aid Society of San Diego and with the San Diego city attorney’s office, but his suit said that it was about a year after he took the bench that his troubles began.

State law provides for lifetime monthly payments equal to 65% of an active judge’s salary for any judge who shows that he or she can no longer do the job because of a mental or physical disability that is--or is likely to become--permanent.