Monday, April 28, 2003
Page 3
Elisabeth E. Ziegler, Who Sat on Local Trial Bench For 31 Years, Dies at 86
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elisabeth E. Ziegler has died, the MetNews has learned.
Ziegler, one of the first woman to reach the local trial bench, was appointed to the Los Angeles Municipal Court by the late Gov. Earl Warren in 1949 and elevated to the Superior Court by former Gov. Ronald Reagan 19 years later. She retired from that court in October 1980.
She passed away April 13, her 86th birthday.
A Los Angeles native, she graduated from USC, where she was voted into Phi Beta Kappa, then earned her law degree there as well. She was admitted to the State Bar in 1942, and worked in the legal office at the Naval Air Station in Seattle before being named an enforcement attorney at the wartime Office of Price Administration.
After the war, she joined her father, Ray C. Eberhard in the general practice of law in Los Angeles. She also lobbied the Legislature on behalf of the California Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, primarily in support of the state’s pioneering “equal-pay-for-equal-work” law.
She and her father practiced as Eberhard and Ziegler until her appointment to the Municipal Court.
She was the presiding judge of that court in 1959 and chaired the Municipal Court Judges Association in 1962-63. She served on the Superior Court Executive Committee in 1973 and 1974 and tried both civil and criminal cases.
Off the bench, she was involved in USC alumni, women’s, church and community organizations. She served as president of the National Business and Professional Women’s Los Angeles affiliate and was an elder in the Silverlake Presbyterian Church.
Her sister, Mildred E. Younger, was married to the late California Attorney General Evelle Younger. Survivors include her nephew, retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Eric Younger.
Copyright 2003, Metropolitan News Company