Sacramento Divorce Attorneys Woodruff, O'Hair, Posner & Salinger $1 Million Legal Malpractice Case Again Referred for Trial and Settlement Conference Dates

Judge David Brown Denies Status Conference Request - Orders Woodruff, O'Hair, Posner & Salinger $1 Million Legal Malpractice Case to Trial Setting Process, Again

D. Thomas Woodruff and his firm Woodruff, O'Hair, Posner

and Salinger are accused of legal malpractice in a lawsuit

alleging over $1 million in damages.

In a tersely worded order, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge David Brown has denied a status conference request by attorneys in the legal malpractice case against prominent Sacramento family law firm Woodruff, O'Hair, Posner and Salinger, firm president D. Thomas Woodruff, and real estate attorney Howard Stagg. On June 3, Robert Johnson, an attorney with the law firm representing Woodruff and his firm, made a written request to Judge Brown on behalf of all attorneys in the case for a Status Conference "at your earliest convenience." Click here to view the request letter. 

In a minute ordered issued a week later, Judge Brown summarily denied the request and re-referred the case "to the Trial Setting Process for selection of trial and MSC dates." The denial inferred that the parties had violated a prior order issued by the judge on October 30, 2012 in which he ordered the same referral for trial setting and Mandatory Settlement Conference. Click here to view Judge Brown's order. As we previously reported, court records show that a Civil Settlement Conference was scheduled for April 4, 2013 in Department 59, and a Long Cause Civil Trial Assignment was calendared for hearing on May 14 in Department 47. The case docket appears to indicate that those events did not take place.

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Sacramento County Superior Court Judge David Brown recently denied the status conference request made by the parties in the Woodruff, O'Hair, Posner and Salinger legal malpractice case. 

Family court watchdogs and court reform advocates are closely watching the litigation and allege that Woodruff, O'Hair, Posner and Salinger is a poster child of family court corruption and cronyism. "All of the attorneys at the firm are temporary judges and Robert O'Hair was one of the architects of the current system," said Susan Ferris, a family court reform advocate. In his sworn testimony from the 2009 Commission on Judicial Performance disciplinary proceedings of family court Judge Peter McBrien, O'Hair testified as a character witness for the controversial judge and detailed his own role in setting up the court structure still in use today. Click here to view the transcript of O'Hair's testimony. O'Hair also has twice held every officer position on the Sacramento County Bar Association Family Law Executive Committee, which watchdogs charge acts essentially as a shadow government controlling virtually all aspects of the ostensibly public family court system. 

Firm partner and judge pro tem Paula Salinger currently is secretary of the Family Law Executive Committee. Salinger has been embroiled in her own controversies, including receipt of a waiver of judge pro tem qualification standards from Judge Steve White, filing fake "notice of entry" of judgment paperwork, and, in her capacity as an officer of the Family Law Executive Committee, silence on our report documenting that trial court judges fail to disclose to opposing parties and attorneys judge pro tem conflicts of interest. And as we reported in October, 2012, partner Jeffrey Posner at that time was unlawfully using his judge pro tem title for promotional purposes on the firm website. After our report was published, Posner scrubbed from the website the reference to his temporary judge status. Posner also was connected to Salinger's counterfeit entry of judgment paperwork scheme, having signed off on one of his partners bogus court filings. 

As judge pro tems, each attorney at the firm is required by state law to take or initiate appropriate corrective action if they receive reliable information that another lawyer has violated any rule of the California Rules of Professional Conduct, or if a fellow judge has violated any provision of the Code of Judicial Ethics. "Posner had a legal and ethical duty to intervene in his partner's notice of entry fraud," said Ferris. "Instead, he endorsed it."
    
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Related content: 

• Click here for our complete coverage of Woodruff, O'Hair Posner & Salinger. 
• Click here for our exclusive judge pro tem attorney list.
• Click here for judge pro tem coverage and controversies.
• Click here for posts on family court watchdogs. 
• Click here for coverage of the Sacramento County Bar Association Family Law Executive Committee.   
• Click here for articles about judge pro tem family law attorney Paula Salinger.
• Click here for posts about family court conflicts of interest. 
• Click here for judicial misconduct articles. 
• Click here for coverage of judge pro tem family law attorney Robert O'Hair.
• Click here for our Color of Law Special Report.