Judge Michael Linfield of Los Angles; incompetent Boob

The state of California presented Michael Linfield with a law license in 1989 after he graduated from Harvard University School of Law.

FYI: former Gov. Gray Davis was duped into appointing Mikey as a Superior Court judge in 2003. Mikey did not get the appointment because he was the most qualified attorney in the greater Los Angeles area. He got it because he had proven to be a reliable lackey for the local political hacks.

In one matter, Mikey presided over a gender discrimination case involving The Regents of the University of California as the defendants.

After a jury finding against The Regents and in favor of Dr. Lauren Pinder-Brown by awarding him $13 million in damages, The Regents appealed the verdict to the Court of Appeal.

In reversing the verdict, the Court of Appeals made the following rulings.

• “Unfortunately, the trial court committed a series of grave errors that significantly prejudiced The Regents’ right to a fair trial by an impartial judge.”
• “First, the court delivered a presentation to the jury highlighting major figures in the civil rights movement, and told the jury their duty was to stand in the shoes of Dr. Martin Luther King and bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.”
• “Second, the court allowed the jury to hear about and view a long list of discrimination complaints from across the entire University of California system that were not properly connected to Dr. Pinter-Brown’s circumstances or her theory of the case.”
• “Third, the court allowed the jury to learn of the contents and conclusions of the Moreno Report, which documented racial discrimination occurring throughout the entire UCLA campus.”
• “Finally, the court allowed Dr. Pinter-Brown to resurrect a retaliation claim after the close of evidence despite having summarily adjudicated that very claim prior to trial.”

The Court of Appeals went on to thoroughly spank Mikey by ruling as follows:

• “These errors were cumulative and highly prejudicial.”
• “They evidence the trial court’s inability to remain impartial and created the impression that the court was partial to Dr. Pinter- Brown’s claims.”
• “[T]he remarks of the trial court here were not an impartial call to duty; they were a resolute and stirring call to action which stacked the deck against UCLA.”
• “It was a grave error for the court to begin a gender discrimination trial with a presentation highlighting the great achievements our nation’s civil rights leaders have made toward creating a world free of discrimination and telling the prospective jurors they were carrying on that quest.”
• “Although particularly prejudicial in a discrimination case, we believe the court’s comments and call to action are inappropriate in any case.  This error was but one of a series of errors that prejudiced UCLA and rendered the trial fundamentally unfair.”

Sadly, this is the kind of jurisprudence you get when someone of Mikey’s ilk is appointed because of his political connections rather than on merit.

It goes without saying that Mikey the Boob  doesn’t much give a damn when he’s overturned (rebuked in truth) by the appellate court since he is well aware that no California judge has ever been tossed off the bench for being an incompetent boob

As we speak (ca. May 2020), Mikey the Dumbo continues to sit as a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge in Los Angeles, California.