Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Friday, August 23, 2002

 

Page 3

 

Davis Appoints Two More Northern California Judges

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

Gov. Gray Davis yesterday continued a summertime blitz of judicial appointments, naming a prosecutor to the Placer Superior Court and a mediation specialist to the Alameda Superior Court.

The appointments of Placer Deputy District Attorney Eugene S. Gini Jr. and Jo-Lynne Q. Lee bring Davis’ August total to 16 bench officers.  But the governor still has a long way to go to fill nearly 50 vacancies in trial courts around the state.

Gini, 45, supervises prosecution of misdemeanors, vehicular homicides and felony drunk driving cases in Placer County. The Roseville resident previously was the lead deputy on all of the conty’s child abuse, sexual assault, elder abuse and domestic violence cases.

Gini leaves a prosecutorial career that took in three counties. He served three stints as a Tulare County deputy district attorney, from 1985 to 1988, again in 1990, and then in 1995-1996. In between, he served as an El Dorado County deputy districy attorney from 1988 to 1995.

He is a graduate of California State University at Sacramento and earned his law degree at the University of Santa Clara.

Lee, 52, practices with the Pleasant Hill firm of Griffith, Castle & Schwartzman, which performs only special master, mediation, referee and arbitration work.

Like Gini, Lee began her legal career as a prosecutor, working as an assistant district attorney in the Bronx from 1974 to 1977. She then worked for a year and a half with the National Center for State Courts in San Francisco, and stayed on in Northern California as an assistant U.S. attorney.

She then moved to the private sector, joining the San Jose insurance defense firm of Robinson & Wood for four years.

From 1985 to 1998, Lee worked with the Oakland law firms of Kennedy & Wasserman and Kennedy, Gong, Mitchell & Combs, handling construction defect, environmental, employment and other civil litigation.

Lee graduated from Brooklyn College and earned her law degree from Columbia University Law School.

Superior Court judges earn annual salaries of $139,476.

 

Copyright 2002, Metropolitan News Company