Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

 

Page 1

 

Superior Court Judge Marlene Kristovich Retires

 

By KENNETH OFGANG, Staff Writer

 

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Marlene Kristovich has quietly retired.

A court spokesperson yesterday confirmed that Kristovich retired last Thursday. The now-retired jurist could not be immediately reached for comment.

Kristovich was appointed to the Los Angeles Municipal Court by then-Gov. George Deukmejian in 1990 and elected to the Superior Court in 1994.

A Los Angeles native, she majored in accounting at USC, graduating in 1973, and then graduated from Loyola Law School in 1978. She was admitted to the State Bar in 1979. and holds inactive licenses as a certified public accountant and as a real estate broker.

She established a solo law practice doing tax, real estate, and probate work, while also working as a tax manager at accounting firms in Los Angeles and San Francisco between 1978 and 1988. She then joined the Glendale and Encino law firm of Bezaire, Bezaire & Bezaire, managing the Glendale office briefly before becoming a U.S. government tax lawyer.

She was working as a trial lawyer in the Tax Division of the Department of Justice when Deukmejian tapped her for the bench in December 1990.

As a municipal court judge, she handled both civil and criminal assignments, and was a proponent of alternative sentencing methods, such as requiring persons convicted of alcohol-related crimes to perform community service at a hospital or at the morgue.

She won an open seat on the court in 1994, polling 62 percent of the vote against then-Superior Court Commissioner H. Ronald Hauptman, now retired. She was unopposed in the 2000 and 2006 elections and was handling a fast-track civil assignment at the time of her retirement.

Kristovich is the daughter of Baldo Kristovich, an attorney since 1938 and the public administrator/public guardian of Los Angeles County from 1960 to 1971. Her brother, Thomas B. Kristovich, retired from law practice in 2000, and a number of her cousins are attorneys.

 

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