Judge Samantha Jessner of Los Angeles, CA; incompetent boob

The state of California presented Samantha P. Jessner with a law license in 1971 after she graduated from the University of California Berkeley (CAL) School of Law.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was duped into appointing Samantha as a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge in 2007. Samantha didn’t receive the appointment because she was the most qualified attorney in the greater Los Angeles area. She received it because she had proven to be a reliable lackey for the local political hacks.

In one matter, Judge Jessner was assigned to preside over a case wherein a traffic accident rendered the man a quadriplegic. After the trial, the jury award nearly $10 million to the injured man relative to his action against the insurer for a bad-faith refusal to settle the matter.

Subsequently, Farmers Insurance appealed the jury verdict and Judge Jessner’s approval of it to Division One of the Court of Appeals. In reversing Judge Jessner’s approval of the $10 million verdict the Court concluded that Jessner failed to provide a required jury instruction to the jury. The court then made the following statements in support of its reversal.

• “A bad faith claim requires a finding that the insurer acted unreasonably in some respect.”
• “Because the jury made no such finding (not having been asked for one), the judgment must be vacated, and a contrary judgment entered for the insurer.”
• “No evidence suggested Farmers’ conduct caused the settlement to fail.”
• “Farmers therefore did all it could to achieve a settlement.”

Of course, Samantha does not much give a damn how many times she is overruled by an Appellate Court since she is well aware that no judge in California has ever been tossed off the bench for being an incompetent boob.

As we speak (ca. August 2021), Samantha continues to practice her so-called brand of jurisprudence as a judge for the Los Angeles County Superior Court in Los Angeles, California.