Superior Court Mainstay to Become a Private Jurist

Melinda A. Johnson, 55, the first woman and longest-serving judge on the Ventura County Superior Court, is leaving the public bench to become a private jurist.

Johnson, an appointee of former Gov. Jerry Brown, has notified court officials that she will resign her $139,000-a-year Superior Court position in late September and enter the lucrative rent-a-judge business.

Johnson said she’s not changing jobs for the money but to stay fresh intellectually and to learn something new. When she passed her 20th anniversary on the bench this year, she said she knew it was time to go.

“People ask me why I’m leaving, and [former Baltimore Oriole] Cal Ripken comes to mind,” Johnson said. “He did what he did longer than anybody else; then one day he said, ‘I’m going to sit out a game.’ There’s a rhythm to things and a pace to things. You know when it’s time for something new.”

Considered one of the county’s top judges, and ranked as outstanding by the local bar association, Johnson’s departure will leave a large hole on the Superior Court, judges and lawyers said.

Witty and outgoing, the calm, disciplined jurist has used a keen intelligence and meticulous preparation to become expert in family law, probate and civil procedure--an instructor of lawyers and other judges statewide.

“I think of the time John Wooden left as coach at UCLA. Or how would you like to follow Chick Hearn with the Lakers?” said Steve Henderson, executive director of the Ventura County Bar Assn. “Her shoes are going to be very difficult to fill.”

Johnson plans to leave the Superior Court on Sept. 27 and begin work as a judge-for-hire the following week.

“I don’t know whether it’s work ethic or guilt,” she said, “but I do everything I can down to the last minute. Besides, our court is short-handed.”

The Superior Court, down one judge for years, will now need two to reach full strength with 28 jurists. A bar association committee will evaluate candidates and make recommendations to Gov. Gray Davis.

Lawyers familiar with the application process say potential candidates include Court Commissioners Manuel J. Covarrubias and Gary K. Barrett, and lawyers Gregory J. Ramirez and Carmen O. Ramirez of Oxnard and Dennis O. LaRochelle of Ventura.

Whoever is selected will need to reach for Johnson’s standard, colleagues said.

“She’s probably our most experienced and versatile judge,” said Bruce Clark, presiding judge of the Superior Court. “She is exceptionally bright, not to denigrate any other judge. Rumor has it she was considered for the Court of Appeal.”

Johnson and her longtime Superior Court office mate, Steven Z. Perren, were both top candidates when Perren was chosen justice for the state 2nd Court of Appeal in Ventura in 1999. More recently, she was a top contender for an appellate position in Los Angeles.

“She’s a hard worker and terrific judge,” Perren said. “She’s as smart a judge as ever sat on the bench.”

Although excelling in several disciplines of civil law, the former county prosecutor may be most expert in family law, which she has taught at the state Judicial College in Berkeley.

Wendy Lascher, an appeals lawyer who heads the local bar’s Judicial Evaluations Committee, said she has had plenty of opportunity to gauge the quality of the decisions of local judges.

“My work is looking at what they’ve done,” she said. “And believe me, I’ve seen some bad ones from some of our sitting judges. But never from her.”

Lascher, a contemporary of Johnson’s, said the judge has always stood out: “She’s just very nice, very smart, calm and sensible. Actually, I’ve never seen her get excited.”

Johnson’s biggest critics are probably county prosecutors, who think she has been too lenient in sentencing criminals.

“I liked her,” Assistant Dist. Atty. Greg Totten said. “But she wasn’t somebody who, generally, we thought we got good results from. We had her disqualified from cases on occasion.”

Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. Bill Redmond, who worked in Johnson’s juvenile court daily for two years, said her sentences were not always as tough as he would have liked, but she always was evenhanded in explaining her decisions.

“We didn’t always agree,” he said. “And she was one of the most caring individuals that I experienced on the juvenile bench. She really took the time to get to know the juvenile defendant, their family situation, their whole social history. And she really tried to structure a disposition that would rehabilitate that kid.”

When she started at Hastings School of Law in San Francisco after graduation from Stanford University in 1969, Johnson said, there was an unwritten 10% ceiling on women law students. Now, nationwide, more than 50% of law school graduates are women. “Fascinating, isn’t it, what happens when you take the lid off,” she said.

In Ventura County, Johnson was the first woman on the Superior Court and its first female presiding judge. And she was the first woman to serve on the 2nd Court of Appeal, albeit for a fill-in stint.

“It was a big deal to everyone else, but I was raised in a newspaper family--my dad was the bureau chief for Newsweek--and I would sit out there and talk politics with guys from the New York Times and the Washington Post,” she said.

“When I was 6 or 7, I’d discuss the Suez Canal crisis, and they told me I’d be the first woman president. So I always thought I could be anything I wanted to be.”

Still, she had to balance work and family. She’s been married to Harley-riding defense lawyer Jay Johnson, and she sometimes hops onto the back of his bike for a Sunday ride. They met at Stanford and her license plate bears their wedding date: 9-13-69.

Yet she describes herself as the ugly duckling of her family, since one sister is the writer of the movie “ET” and the wife of actor Harrison Ford, and the other is an Emmy-award winning television writer. One brother is a freelance writer and the other a musician.

Two big cases indicate the broad scope of her judicial career: She oversaw a multimillion-dollar product liability verdict against Ford Motor Co. because of gas fumes leaking into one of its sedans in the 1980s and imposed a $4-million jury award against Target stores for alleged illegal detention of employees suspected of theft in the 1990s.