County Jurist in Running for State Appeals Bench : Judgeship: Kenneth R. Yegan is said to be a top candidate for seat covering Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

A Ventura County Superior Court judge is one of two top candidates for a state appeals court judgeship vacated last week by Justice Richard W. Abbe, The Times has learned.

Sources say Judge Kenneth R. Yegan is being considered--along with San Luis Obispo County Superior Court Judge Warren C. Conklin--for the 2nd District Court of Appeal’s 6th Division, covering Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

Yegan, 43, and Conklin, 53, declined to comment Wednesday.

Yegan has long wanted to rejoin the appellate court’s 5th Division in Los Angeles, where he once worked as a senior attorney, according to Ventura County lawyers familiar with his work.

Yegan and Conklin’s positions as front-runners for Abbe’s seat were revealed this week by sources in the legal community and confirmed Wednesday by Abbe’s colleague, 6th Division Presiding Justice Steven J. Stone.

Stone and San Luis Obispo County Dist. Atty. Barry T. LaBarbera said Yegan and Conklin are the only appeals court candidates from the 6th Division who have already undergone a lengthy screening by the state bar association’s Judicial Nominees Evaluation Commission.

By law, the governor can appoint judges in the last 90 days of his term without commission screening.

But Gov. George Deukmejian has pledged not to take advantage of the law and will consider only judicial nominees the commission has reviewed, his appointment secretary, Terry Flanigan, said.

Ventura County Superior Court Presiding Judge Edwin M. Osborne and several of his colleagues, who have not been identified, also have applied to Deukmejian for the seat vacated when Abbe announced his resignation Nov. 28. Abbe is serving in the position as a pro tem judge until he is replaced.

Ventura rancher Paul Leavens, who serves on an informal panel advising Deukmejian on judicial nominees, said he received Osborne’s letter this week and intends to support him.

Leavens said he does not recall the panel reviewing Yegan’s qualifications.

“I enjoy appellate work,” said Osborne, who has done extensive appellate work as an attorney, a Superior Court judge and a pro tem judge in the appeals court’s 5th Division several years ago. “It’s intellectually very challenging--you get to do a good deal of research and writing and trying to solve problems with your colleagues on the court.”

Anita McKenzie, a spokeswoman for Deukmejian’s office, refused Wednesday to confirm or deny the name or status of anyone nominated to the appeals court.

Yegan received his doctorate in 1972 from the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento after earning an undergraduate degree at UC Santa Barbara.

He worked as a trial deputy in the Ventura County public defender’s office from 1972 to 1975, when he became senior attorney in the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles.

After leaving that job in 1982, he worked in private practice for four months before Deukmejian appointed him to the Ventura County Municipal Court bench. On July 2, 1986, Deukmejian elevated Yegan to the Superior Court position he now holds.

Conklin, president of the California Judges Assn., has served on the San Luis Obispo County Superior Court bench since he was elected in 1982.

He graduated from the Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley in 1964 and worked as an attorney for the California Division of Contracts and Rights of Way, then as a private attorney.

In 1967, Conklin was appointed to a judgeship on the Justice Court in Atascadero. In 1975, he became one of the first judges in the countywide Municipal Court, where he worked until his election to the Superior Court bench.