Judge David P. Yaffe — Perched on a Throne in ‘Wonderland’

Judge David P. Yaffe — Perched on a Throne in ‘Wonderland’ By ROGER M. GRACE I’m not exactly objective when it comes to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David P. Yaffe. I can’t stand him. I’ve appeared before him in three cases. (The Daily Journal Corporation sought to wrest a City of Los Angeles contract from the Metropolitan News Company, and lost; MNC pushed for rescission of two County of Los Angeles contracts awarded to DJC, and lost.) Too, I’ve viewed Yaffe’s handling of numerous other cases with which I’ve been unconnected. I commented in a column on Sept. 15 on one proceeding I viewed while waiting for a matter to be called; Yaffe imposed a $200 sanction on a plaintiff’s lawyer for not giving notice of a status conference to lawyers for the other parties. The problem was that there were no other attorneys of record in the case. And Yaffe imposed that sanction on Aug. 24 notwithstanding that one day after he issued an OSC re sanction on July 26, the Court of Appeal, in a published opinion, invalidated a sanction meted out under identical circumstances. From what… Read More