Deukmejian Won’t Name Gillespie to Bench, Sources Say

Outgoing Insurance Commissioner Roxani Gillespie will not be appointed a Superior Court judge after all, official sources said Thursday.

Although no one directly involved in the matter would comment for the record, the sources said that Gov. George Deukmejian had informed Gillespie that he would not be making the appointment in his last days in office and that Gillespie had accordingly withdrawn her name.

The decision ends an angry seven-week controversy during which consumer representatives assailed Gillespie, whom they termed a defender of the insurance industry, as unsuitable for the bench.

Tom Epstein, press secretary to Insurance Commissioner-elect John Garamendi, said Garamendi’s transition office had received reports, which it had not verified, that Gillespie had been rated “unqualified” for the Los Angeles judgeship. The qualifications are officially evaluated by the State Bar’s 27-member Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation.

In its 15-year history, no governor has named anyone a judge over the commission’s objections. A governor’s aide said earlier in the week that Deukmejian--who had submitted Gillespie’s name for evaluation--would not pursue his appointment of her if the commission rated her unqualified.

Representatives of the commission’s chairman, Los Angeles attorney Warren Ettinger, State Bar President Charles Vogel, Deukmejian and Gillespie declined to say what the commission’s recommendation had been.

Citing confidentiality rules, Ettinger and Vogel would not even say whether Gillespie had appeared before the panel or whether the commission had voted on her qualifications.

Proposition 103 author Harvey Rosenfield said, however, that Ettinger had told him that Gillespie did appear to defend herself against critics about Dec. 4 and that the full commission had met on the matter about Dec. 15.

Ettinger said he “could not recall such a conversation” with Rosenfield.

Gillespie’s press secretary, Carey Fletcher, said the question of Gillespie’s nomination to the Superior Court was “a matter of the commissioner’s personal business and the press office will not respond.” Gillespie did not return telephone calls.

Deukmejian press secretary Robert Gore said that traditionally the governor’s office does not comment on nominations that are not made.

During recent weeks Gillespie, who promised last year not to return to an insurance industry job after leaving the commissioner’s office, has been in the news with her decisions to lift a freeze on auto insurance prices and allow a number of companies general rate increases.

The day before Christmas, an Insurance Department aide announced that Gillespie, who was in Greece at the time, had approved rate increases for 46 companies.

But long before the rate increases, consumer leaders had soured on the commissioner, who they charged had not tried sincerely to implement Proposition 103, passed by the electorate in 1988. They pointed out that Gillespie once promised to make rate rollback decisions for all companies by November, 1989, but more than a year later she has yet to make her first decision.

Gillespie said she had concluded early that the net effect of Proposition 103 would be to hurt, not help, consumers.

Some members of the judiciary and the legal profession complained in the course of the controversy that the main reason for opposing Gillespie was dislike of her positions as commissioner, and that this was not fair grounds to find someone unqualified for the bench.

Gillespie had been counsel to an insurance company, Industrial Indemnity, before being named by Deukmejian to the commissioner’s office. Some critics cited a lack of experience in private practice as a deficiency in her judicial qualifications, but friends said her experience in civil law was an asset.