Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Page 1
Anita Dymant Named to Appellate Division
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Anita H. Dymant, a 15-year veteran of the bench, was reassigned to the court’s Appellate Division effective yesterday.
Dymant, who has spent the last seven years handling felony trials, after serving as a misdemeanor trial judge for eight-and-a-half years, told the MetNews she looks forward to her new assignment, which takes her away from jury trials and into the writing of opinions.
“When you do the same thing for a long time, it’s always good to have a new challenge and something different,” she said. “It’s something I’d been thinking about for the last few years.”
In her new assignment, she will be handling appeals from limited jurisdiction civil and misdemeanor criminal cases.
When asked whether she has hopes for an eventual appointment to the Court of Appeal, she said she has “no immediate plans” but “it’s always a possibility.”
Members of each superior court’s appellate division are appointed by Chief Justice Ronald M. George upon recommendation of the court’s presiding judge. Los Angeles Superior Court Presiding Judge Czuleger said he recommended Dymant for the job because of her “strong writing abilities and varied background.”
She had been requesting the reassignment for some time, he noted.
Dymant replaces Marvin Lager, who is now back in a civil trial assignment at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse. Lager has been tasked with overseeing and working to standardize the civil department’s currently problematic default operations, Czuleger said.
Dymant, 57, was named to the Los Angeles Municipal Court in 1992 by then-Gov. Pete Wilson, and elevated to the Superior Court upon the unification of the trial courts in 2000.
From 1981 until her appointment, she served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, most recently prosecuting fraud and white collar crime cases.
She worked as a senior trial attorney with the Interstate Commerce Commission in Los Angeles from 1978-1981, prior to which she spent one year as an associate in the Ventura firm of Robinson, Melikan & Imbrecht.
Dymant earned her law degree from the University of Illinois in 1974, and her undergraduate degree in history from Brandeis University in 1971.
For two years before her admission to the State Bar of California in 1977, she worked as an attorney-advisor with the Interstate Commerce Commission in Washington D.C., where she wrote agency rules and opinions for administrative law judges.
Dymant was admitted to practice in Illinois in 1975, and Washington D.C. in 1976.
Copyright 2007, Metropolitan News Company