VCTLA.ORG - Ventura County Trial Lawyers Association

Dan Palay has been named 2007 Trial Lawyer of the Year by the Ventura County Trial Lawyers Association. Palay, a resident of Ventura, has developed a successful practice representing employees in the area of employment law. This is the third year Palay has been nominated for the award based upon the significant results he regularly achieves for his clients.

This year, Palay was honored for his efforts in a wage and hour class action case which was arbitrated resulting in the largest per-person award in California history. Palay and his co-counsel, Alex Gutierrez, represented a class of 434 pest control operators whose employer claimed were “exempt” employees, not entitled to overtime and other benefits under the wage and hour law. The arbitrator awarded damages in the amount of $39.4 million for overtime, $11.8 million in prejudgment interest and daily interest after the award of $10,660.

Since starting his career in 1992, Palay has handled over 70 wage and hour class actions with more than thirty of them resulting in settlements, awards or verdicts in excess of $1 million.

Dan Palay embodies the criteria for which the Trial Lawyer of the Year award is given: noteworthy civil trial results, contributions to the legal community and to the betterment of the Civil Justice System, high standards of ethics, civility, courage and advocacy.

The Ventura County Trial Lawyers Association have named the Honorable David W. Long as 2007 Judge of the Year.

The award, presented at VCTLA’s annual Judge’s Night, recognizes the service of all Ventura County bench officers. VCTLA officers praised Judge Long’s dedication, demeanor and effectiveness. President Joel Mark stated: Judge Long has every quality of a superlative bench officer. He is knowledgeable, fair, hard working and insightful, and treats all who come before him with courtesy and respect. A better choice for Judge of the Year would have been hard to find.

President Dennis Neil Jones added: “Judge Long has served the court, the Bar and our community and he is very deserving of this award. His skill in settling cases is a big reason why litigants can get to trial here in less than a year.”

Judge Long graduated cum laude from the Ventura College of Law in 1983 following a 17-year career as a casualty insurance claims adjuster and executive, and seven years as a paralegal/legal assistant and investigator for the oldest law firm (founded 1882) in Ventura. After 10 years of practice, primarily as a civil trial attorney, he applied for appointment to a vacant Ventura County Superior and Municipal Court Commissioner position and was selected over 126 other applicants.

After two years as a Superior and Municipal Court Commissioner, Governor Wilson appointed him to a Municipal Court Judgeship in October, 1995 and elevated him to his present Superior Court Judgeship in November 1997. He was subsequently elected to his present term.

His previous judicial assignments have included misdemeanor and felony arraignment calendars, felony preliminary examinations, criminal jury trials, both misdemeanor and felony, including "three strike" cases, civil short cause, and civil jury trials in all their varieties. He is presently the Supervising Civil Judge of the Ventura County Superior Court and handles all Civil Mandatory Settlement Conferences, and sits on the Superior Court Appellate Panel. In 1997 the Ventura County Trial Lawyers Association named him Municipal Court Trial Judge of the year.

In addition to his judicial duties, Judge Long has served on the Board of Directors of the Tri-Counties Easter Seal Society, the Board of Directors of the Kiwanis Club of Ventura, is a former Sr. Vice Commandant of the Marine Corps League, Ventura County Detachment 597, of which he remains a member.

He has served as the chair of the court's Judge Pro Tem committee, the Bench, Bar, Media Committee, is Chair of the Court's Legislation and Rules Committee, and the Court's ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution) Committee, among others. He serves statewide on the California Judges Association Civil Law and Procedure Committee and is presently President of the Board of Trustees of the Ventura and Santa Barbara Colleges of Law.

Judge Long says he looks back on his Marine Corps Service and his law school experience as among the most rewarding of his life, exceeded only by the enjoyment and satisfaction of his present position as a Superior Court Judge.

Judge Long is married to Shirley Critchfield and in their "blended family" they have seven grown children, 17 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

The Ventura County Trial Lawyers Association will honor the late Judge Alice Titus Magill at its annual Judge’s Night, March 27 at the Residence Inn in Oxnard.

The organization will honor Magill by unveiling her judicial portrait, to be later hung at the Courthouse. “Judge Alice” was Ventura County’s first woman attorney, first appointed female judge, and the first woman in the county to win a judicial election. Her story follows.

              Alice Titus, who had heard the whistle of the southbound train every day of her young life, climbed aboard at the Santa Paula station and headed for the only law school in the Southwest, USC Law School, just months after her 1905 graduation from high school.

              When she entered the law school, located directly across from the Bradbury Building, she would have found that she was the only woman among fifteen entering students. The space had been donated by a suffragette who toured the country with Susan B. Anthony. Women were welcome.

              Alice Titus was born in California in the mid 1880's, the fifth child of James Titus and Mariette Briggs. Her siblings were born in the midwest. The closest in age to Alice died shortly before the family reached California.
In Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, James Titus struggled as a farmer. He took the family west to some of the best soil in the world...and sold insurance. The business burned to the ground in December 1903.

              In 1904, James Titus, whom everyone called J.B., was serving on-the-side as Justice of the Peace. A monthly stipend was paid. The office involved an assortment of tasks including, at times, escorting the accused to jail. He would be the only judge in the county who would run unopposed in 1910, and the only judge who would enter an automobile race in 1911.

              Alice certainly tagged along with her father on occasion. There is a sense that her birth, following the death of her sibling, brought great joy to the family.

              Why, after graduating from high school in 1905, Alice decided to go to law school, or how she knew that USC had a fledgling school, is not recorded. She was, no doubt, the first woman from Ventura County to enroll in law school. How she went about applying, and who decided to admit her, is also unrecorded.

              USC Law School was incorporated in 1897. At the time, most law schools, including the most prominent, did not admit women. It is estimated that Alice was between the sixth and tenth woman to graduate from USC Law School when she completed her studies in 1908.

                       Alice would have known Clara Foltz, the first woman admitted to the California Bar and a fighter for women’s causes. She would have known every prominent suffragette in Southern California from 1900 to 1920.

Women would not gain the vote in California until 1911, and the Constitution would not give a nod for another nine years. Only men served on juries. Most courthouses did not have a ladies’ room. That is the world Alice stepped into when she passed her oral bar examination before the state supreme court.

When Alice began law school in 1905, there were questions as to whether or not women, who were first allowed to enter the Olympics five years earlier, had the stamina to complete a professional academic program. Roughly one percent of all lawyers in the country at that time were women. It is unclear how many were actually practicing.

              Los Angeles, with a population topping 100,000, was an exciting place to study and practice law. USC was under scrutiny for paying a football player; and a theater was sued for discrimination. In the year of her graduation, there was a demonstration protesting the film Birth of a Nation; an aeronaut dropped a fake bomb on City Hall from a dirigible; and there was talk of beautifying the Los Angeles River.

              While he could not be in Los Angeles himself, President Theodore Roosevelt sent his Great White Fleet chugging into Santa Monica Bay in 1908. The response: An outcry that the ships were polluting the air.

              While Alice could earn a degree, using it was another matter. At the time, women were hitched to a head-of-household. Single women generally did not live on their own. Clara Foltz had been abandoned by her husband. While in law school, Alice most likely lived at a boarding house such as the YWCA. If a woman were widowed or abandoned, a household had been established in the name of a man. In those cases, a woman could continue the household in her name.

              In 1908, Alice returned to her family’s Santa Paula home. It must have been a proud day for J.B. and Alice when she hung her shingle in the window of his Main Street insurance business establishing herself as the first practicing woman attorney in Ventura County.

              Alice would practice for three years in Ventura County, up to the death of her father in 1911. An older brother had moved to Los Angeles. Alice, her mother, and sister joined him there in 1911, and Alice was hired as a Deputy City Attorney for the City of Los Angeles.

              We don’t know, but it is reasonable to believe, that Alice was the first female deputy city attorney in Los Angeles, and, most likely, in all of Southern California, if not all of California.

              Alice was a prosecutor in the city attorney’s office for seven years. She resigned in 1918 when she married Robert Magill. In her words, “I gave up my position in law to become a lady for a number of years.” It was more than that.

              In 1918, Alice was positioned like no woman lawyer in California before her. She had graduated from an accredited school as USC was awarded its national accreditation in 1907. She had practiced for 10 years. She most likely knew every practicing attorney in the city of Los Angeles if not the county. She preceded the creation of the women’s law sorority, Phi Delta Delta, With the exception of Clara Foltz, she was out in front of the women lawyers who would be recorded as achieving “firsts.”

              When Alice married, her career as an attorney stopped. No Google search will lead to her story. She would have known those to whom such searches do lead but not as pioneers. With the exception of Clara Foltz, the women who are chronicled came in Alice’s wake.

              Years later, when looking back, Alice had no regrets, “I’m not much of a hand to live in the past, not much of a record keeper. I don’t live in the past-I enjoy my life each day.”

            As of 1922, there were 130 women admitted to the California Bar. Sixteen hundred were admitted nationwide but only half were practicing. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor would not be born until 1930. O’Connor would be unable to find work as a lawyer when she graduated Stanford Law in 1952.

              There is little mention of Alice again until 1938. She did spend part of this time volunteering as a teacher of young women. She was active in women’s groups: P.E.O. International and the Ebell Society are two. In 1926, she must have been filling-in for the city attorney’s office as she was given an award for being the most polite person in City Hall.

              In 1938, Robert Magill retired from the railroad. The couple returned to Santa Paula. The City Council approached Alice and asked if she would fill the position of City Judge. She agreed. She held the position, as Ventura’s first woman judge, for 15 years while Robert ran a paint store located within view of the Santa Paula depot. When Robert died, Alice left the bench and ran the paint store for three years when it was sold. She then ran for the position of Judge of the Justice Court. She lost. In 1960, she ran again in a contested election. She won. The position changed to Municipal Court Judge in 1965.

              At age 80, Alice was working in two courts and often hearing cases into the evening. She retired in 1968 after serving a total of twenty-three years on the bench. Her only plan was to learn to shoot pool. Her clerks said they would miss her judicial robe with the lace-trimmed collar, and the powder puff in the restroom. While given the opportunity, Judge Alice always declined the opportunity to list her accomplishments. Rather, she let her actions speak. Alice was over age 70 when she ran in 1960 to put a woman back on the bench.

            If there were any doubt as to whether Alice knew of her contribution, she made it clear upon leaving the bench, saying, ”I wish there was a woman to succeed me. I wish there was a woman to carry on.”

              Alice’s bar number is 9098 but her actual ranking is lower. Numbers were first assigned In 1927. Except for a few honorary ones, numbers were assigned randomly to those already admitted.

              Throughout her life, an etching of the Santa Paula railroad depot from whose platform Alice stepped in 1905 hung on a wall in her home. Alice Titus Magill had much to tell. She kept such things close but she has winked at us across a century, for when she left Santa Paula in 1905 she was age 17 or 18. When she reached the law school, she was 20. When asked about her age in 1968 she said, “I don’t remember.”

The Honorable Alice Titus Magill died on December 22, 1975. Her portrait will hang in Courtroom 22.

Judge’s Night is open to the public. Those interested in attending may contact the Bar Association at 805-650-7599.

(Quotations were taken from the 5/5/1968 issue of the Oxnard Press-Courier. The author thanks Nancy King, Beverly Harding and U.S.C. Associate Dean John G. (Tom) Tomlinson for their assistance in researching this story).

^[1] William Grewe is a board member of the Ventura County Trial Lawyers Association. Reprinted with permission from the Ventura County Bar Association