Justice Rick Sims to Step Down

Justice Richard Sims III announced yesterday he will retire from the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento sometime between Oct. 31, 2010 and Jan 31, 2011. reports the Met News.

Justice Sims has served on the court since 1982, when he was elevated from the Placer County Superior Court.  Before taking the bench, he had practiced law at Thelen, Marrin, Johnson & Bridges.  He had also served as general counsel to the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, Executive Director of the San Francisco Committee on Crime, and as a VISTA Volunteer attorney.  He graduated from Amherst College and Harvard Law School, where he was class president.

The Met News states Justice Sims has “no future plans beyond traveling with his wife. ‘I will not sit on assignment,’ he explained. ‘Whether I will do private judging, I don’t know.’ If he does, he said, it will be after ‘a period of not thinking about the law for awhile’ because he is ‘just going to take a break.'"

(h/t Ben Shatz.  Photo shows Justice Sims and Linda Wallihan at a 2007 Sacramento Area Emergency Housing Center event.)