Mostly news from the 3d

Today's DJ has:

Sacramento judge named for 3rd District, 15 superior court judges appointed -- Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Judge Shama H. Mesiwala to the Sacramento superior court in 2017.

Mesiwala is a graduate of UC Davis School of Law and has been an adjunct professor there since 2013. She worked as a judicial attorney in the 3rd District court from 2004 to 2017, mainly as senior judicial attorney to Justice Ronald B. Robie. Robie is now the court’s acting presiding justice, after the June retirement of Presiding Justice Vance W. Raye and two others. If confirmed by the Commission on Judicial Appointments, Mesiwala would replace Coleman A. Blease, who retired that same month at 92 after 43 years on the court.

One of the appointed SFSC judges is Michael Rhoads, who had "been chambers attorney to Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye at the Supreme Court of California since 2018 and a senior attorney at the California Supreme Court from 2016 to 2018."

AND

Justice Coleman Arthur Blease 1929 — 2022 -- He served on the 3rd District Court of Appeal for 43 years.

Retired Justice Coleman A. Blease, a liberal stalwart on the 3rd District Court of Appeal and one of the longest serving justices in California history, died Nov. 28. He was 93.

Yesterday's Recorder had: As Trial Courts Work Through COVID Backlogs, Will Appellate Caseloads Be Impacted? -- Judge Richard Clifton, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, said judges on his court have speculated that there are more appeals ahead, though no signs of that trend have emerged yet.

“Civil cases that go to trial often involve more issues, such as evidentiary issues, and more serious and contested allegations. Criminal trials resolved with guilty pleas can still produce appeals, but not as many and on more limited issues. With the resumption of trials, the assumption is we will get more appeals from those cases and that some of them will be more complex,” Clifton, president of the Federal Judges Association, said in an email.

So far, statistics captured by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts don’t show a post-pandemic rebound in appeals filed across the federal appeals courts. The total number decreased from about 45,800 filed from June 2020 to June 2021 to about 42,000 filed from June 2021 to June 2022.

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