Tuesday, April 22, 2003
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Judge Marilyn Hoffman to Retire From Los Angeles Superior Court
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Marilyn L. Hoffman is retiring, the veteran jurist told the MetNews yesterday.
Hoffman said she will officially step down June 6, with will be her 68th birthday, but that her last day on the bench will be this Friday, after which she will take accrued vacation time.
“It’s been an excellent run,” she said, “especially the last five years in civil court.” Hoffman came to the bench with a civil background, but spent her early years on the court hearing primarily criminal cases.
The jurist said she plans to work on a house that she and her husband, a dentist, recently purchased in Encino. She also plans to travel, paint, read and spend time with her seven grandchildren.
She had no current plans to engage in private or assigned judging, she commented, but may consider those options at a later time. A former research attorney for the Court of Appeal, she said she may also do “a little appellate work” at some point, although she expects her other projects to keep her busy.
The judge is a Los Angeles native who graduated from Fairfax High School, then attended UCLA. She left school in order to earn money in anticipation of her subsequent marriage, then went overseas with her husband, who was in the Air Force, and worked as secretary to the commander of an Air Force base in Morocco.
After returning to California, she raised three children, graduated from California State University-Northridge, and earned her law degree at what was then San Fernando Valley College of the Law.
She began her legal career as staff attorney at this district’s Court of Appeal in 1977. She went to the state Department of Corporations in 1979, then joined the Encino firm that is now Horvitz & Levy in 1980.
She returned to the Court of Appeal in 1983 to become senior attorney for Justice Armand Arabian, who was later elevated to the state Supreme Court and is now retired. She was appointed to the Los Angeles Municipal Court by then-Gov. George Deukmejian in 1987 and became a Superior Court judge through unification in 2000.
Copyright 2003, Metropolitan News Company