Governor Brown Appoints Pasadena Lawyer to Los Angeles County Superior Court

California Gov. Jerry Brown has appointed Pasadena lawyer Theresa M. Traber as one of seven new judges at the Los Angeles County Superior Court. She fills the vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Steven D. Ogden.

Traber, 59, is a civil rights and employment lawyer who has been a founding partner at Pasadena’s Traber and Voorhees since 1991. During her legal career, she has handled mostly individual and class action lawsuits alleging employment and housing discrimination and class-wide violations of wage and hour protections under federal and state law.

In addition, Traber has handled cases alleging assorted violations of constitutional rights, including police abuse and misconduct by U.S. military installations and other federal entities.

Traber’s recent work has focused on class action wage and hour litigation on behalf of low-wage and middle-income workers and on international human rights litigation.

Traber is a Lawyer Representative to the Ninth Judicial Conference and a member of the Merit Selection Panel for the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

For the last ten years, she has been recognized as one of Southern California’s Super Lawyers and, in 2004, as one of the top 50 female lawyers in Southern California by Los Angeles Magazine and Law and Politics Magazine.

In 2001, the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice Foundation honored Traber and her co-counsel as finalists for Public Interest Trial Lawyers of the Year for their work in Doe v. Radovan Karadzic, which resulted in a verdict of more than $4.5 billion for 21 Muslim families whose members were murdered, tortured, raped and otherwise brutalized as a part of the Serbian “ethnic cleansing” campaign in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Traber received her Juris Doctor from Northeastern University Law School in 1984 and her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Traber is a Democrat.

The other new judges are Michelle M. Ahnn of Redondo Beach, Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of Silver Spring, Maryland; Stephen I. Goorvitch of South Pasadena; Maurice A. Leiter of Los Angeles; Catherine J. Pratt of Long Beach; and Joshua D. Wayser of Los Angeles.

The annual compensation for each of these positions is $189,041.