Justice Zukin helped build state's judicial mentor program, faces first retention vote

A mother who had recorded her former partner appearing outside her home in the middle of the night 70 times asked to renew her domestic violence restraining order. The trial court found her fear genuine but not reasonable, pointing to the lack of a pattern of conduct after the order was issued.

Writing for the 2nd District Court of Appeal, Division 4, in G.G. v. G.S. (2024), now-Presiding Justice Helen Zukin reversed. "The law does not permit courts to make a distinction between physical and non-physical abuse when issuing DVROs," she wrote. "Nor is there any indication that courts should make such a distinction when deciding whether to renew them."

Renewal does not depend on new violations, Zukin wrote. "A court order may change behavior, but that does not mean it has solved the problem."

"The California Court of Appeals' decision in G.G. v. G.S. ... validates what practitioners have long observed: psychological abuse is not merely a precursor to physical violence, but a distinct and severe form of harm warranting robust legal protection," family law attorney Noel E. Guth wrote in a Daily Journal column.

Gov. Gavin Newsom nominated Zukin to Division 4 in 2023. Two years later he elevated her to succeed her retiring predecessor. She faces voters on Nov. 3 for the remaining four years of the term.

Zukin's opinions have examined the reach of legal rules -- and the conduct of lawyers operating within them.

In Cook v. University of Southern California (2024), she affirmed a ruling that an arbitration agreement USC required an employee to sign was unconscionable. It covered claims against the university, its affiliates and employees for anything, with no end date. "It is difficult to see how it is justified to expect Cook -- as a condition of her employment at the university -- to give up the right to ever sue a USC employee in court for defamatory statements or other claims that are completely unrelated to Cook's employment," she wrote.

Her attention to the workings of the legal system extended to the lawyers themselves in WasteXperts Inc. v. Arakelian Enterprises Inc. (2024). Reversing an anti-SLAPP ruling in a waste-hauling dispute, the court said it published the opinion "to draw attention to our concluding note on civility and persuasive brief writing." Zukin wrote that the appellant's briefs had launched "needless and unsubstantiated attacks" on the trial judge, opposing party and lawyers.

"None of the vitriol advanced the legal arguments in this case," she wrote. "Ad hominem attacks and other invective detract from counsel's legal arguments, signal inappropriate personal embroilment in the dispute, and indicate an inability to engage in the reasoned analysis the courts need and counsel's clients deserve."

After Loyola Law School, Zukin spent more than three decades in plaintiffs' complex civil litigation, most recently as a partner at Kiesel Law.

Gov. Jerry Brown appointed her to the Los Angeles County Superior Court in June 2018. Assigned to family law, an area in which she had no experience, she found the work rewarding. "It's not something that I'd expected I would be doing, but it's meaningful in ways I didn't expect," she told the Daily Journal in 2019. "You have these moments of peak experience with people."

"She does things by the book," Los Angeles attorney Juan Carlos Moran, who handled an intense divorce case before her, said at the time.

Zukin has spent more than 30 years evaluating judicial candidates. She has chaired State Bar, federal court and Los Angeles County Bar Association judicial-selection panels and now chairs Newsom's Los Angeles Judicial Selection Advisory Committee.

Among her career highlights is the Judicial Mentor Program, which she helped established at the Superior Court and develop statewide. It walks lawyers through the judicial selection and vetting process and addresses the imposter phenomenon many feel before applying. She co-chairs the Appellate Judicial Mentor Program.