Thursday, April 12, 2007
Page 1
Judge Mayeda to Retire, Says Last Day on Bench Is Tomorrow
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John M. Mayeda said yesterday he will retire on May 30 after a nearly 26-year judicial career.
Tomorrow will be his last day on the bench, he told the MetNews.
“This has been an extraordinarily good job and I’ve really, really enjoyed doing it,” Mayeda remarked. “I do not want to stop working, but I did want to do something a little different.”
He said his immediate future plan is to work with JAMS, an Irvine-based provider of dispute resolution services.
“Since the early ‘70s, I’ve probably spent 95 percent of my time five days a week in courthouses, so it’s going to be a transition to not come to the courthouse everyday either as a lawyer or judge,” he commented.
Mayeda, 59, was appointed to the Los Angeles Municipal Court in 1981 by then-Gov. Jerry Brown, and elevated to the Superior Court in 1999 by then-Gov. Gray Davis.
He served as presiding judge of the Municipal Court in 1990, a post in which Los Angeles Superior Court Presiding Judge Stephen Czuleger said Mayeda did “just an incredible job.”
Czuleger, a former municipal court judge who has known Mayeda since 1988, added that his colleague is well-regarded by both fellow judges and attorneys who have appeared before him.
As a superior court judge, Mayeda has presided over both criminal and civil matters and is now in his 13th year on a civil trial court assignment. He is a member of the court’s executive committee, and has formerly served as supervising judge of the Central Arraignment Courts and assistant supervising judge of the Metropolitan Court.
From 1993 to 1998, he helped oversee $1.7 billion in trial court budgets as a member of the State Trial Court Budget Commission. From 1994 to 1997, he served on the Judicial Council of California, the policy and rule-making body for the state’s courts.
Mayeda has also been involved in teaching and developing curriculum for judicial branch education through the Continuing Judicial Studies Program, the Judicial Administration Institute of California, which he chaired from 1999 to 2000, and the California Judicial Education and Research governing board.
Before joining the bench, Mayeda was a Los Angeles deputy city attorney from 1973 to 1981, serving first on the criminal side before switching to civil matters. He worked as a customs inspector for the U.S. Customs Service from 1968 until his admission to the State Bar in 1972.
He earned his law degree from UCLA in 1971 and holds an undergraduate degree in psychology from University of Redlands, where he also minored in business and graduated in 1968.
Mayeda is a founding member of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Los Angeles County and a longtime member of the Japanese American Bar Association of the Greater Los Angeles Area.
He is also a past president of the California Asian Judges’ Association, a former member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, and a past vice president of the California Judges Association.
Copyright 2007, Metropolitan News Company