Thursday, March 9, 2023

DJ profiles Justice Meehan

Today's DJ has After a successful civil law career, Justice Kathleen Meehan came home to Fresno: 5th District justice has deep roots in Fresno County.

  • Probably more than any other appellate court in California, the 5th District Court of Appeal is mostly occupied by locals. Meehan, Justice Donald R. Franson Jr. and Justice Mark W. Snauffer are all graduates of Bullard High School in Fresno. Meehan and Snauffer were on the debate team at the same time. Presiding Justice Brad R. Hill and Justices Rosendo Peña Jr., Bert Levy and Charles S. Poochigian all grew up in Fresno or the surrounding county. Justice Thomas DeSantos hails from just over the Kings County line in Hanford.
  • Meehan said Fresno is a more traditional, slower changing place than many other parts of California. But there was also plenty going on there when she was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of the biggest musical acts of the time came through a pair of local concert venues, the Fresno Convention Center and the Rainbow Ballroom. She saw Janis Joplin with Big Brother & the Holding Company, the Grateful Dead, Buffalo Springfield and The Doors — twice — with ticket prices usually $3 or $4.
  • Like many of her colleagues, Meehan left the area for a time and then returned to the place where most of her family still lives. She had a successful decadelong run as a civil attorney in Los Angeles, working for three firms at the outset of her career. Then came the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The shaking smashed a cabinet full of collectible china in the Beverly Hills home where she lived with her husband. “Like a fool,” Meehan said, she got dressed and drove to work after the overnight temblor — only to find the parking garage at her office had collapsed.
  • Meehan said love of Notre Dame football was part of the identity of her “Irish on both sides” family; she still regularly tunes in to watch the team.
  • Meehan said she wanted to be a lawyer from a young age. But her route to the profession was still long. She attended St. Mary’s College in Moraga, where she got a liberal arts degree and met her husband. Wanting more real world experience, she got a job as a stockbroker at the main headquarters of Dean Witter in San Francisco. As one of two women on the trading floor, she said, her co-workers’ “constant catcalls and comments” made it clear the women “were not welcome.”
  • Meehan said she loves the research and analysis of her current job. But even though she can look around the office and see people she went to high school with, she said both Fresno and the court have changed. The city has grown and sprawled, and a big new cadre of attorneys now appear before her, many from other places.