And this casual photo is in line with the big news -- CAL-ABOTA has added a Chapter. The Hawaii Chapter accepted our invitation to join CAL-ABOTA and this addition was approved at our summer Board meeting in San Francisco. As I joked at the time, we needed to add a Chapter in case San Bernardino County votes in November to secede from California!

And although this “acquisition” is not final until January 2023, we have invited the Hawaii Chapter members to attend our Annual Conference at Mauna Kea this year and hopefully you will be able to meet a few. In the meantime, if you need local counsel in Hawaii for any matters, I suggest that you consider one of our new brothers and sisters. And Hawaii members, if you need local counsel in the mainland, please consider an ABOTA member. You can look up the members on the National ABOTA website HERE.

The California Coast Chapter is having a productive year so far and looking forward to the next few months of 2022.

ABOTA National Vice President Andrea La’Verne Edney was the featured speaker at our Spring meeting, traveling from her home in Mississippi to join us in Pismo Beach, and providing us with an insightfull and interesting overview of ABOTA nationally.

We are very excited to have National Foundation President John Kim join us for our Fall meeting in Ventura. Also, this coming Fall, our chapter will be presenting a Civility Matters forum at Pepperdine Law School and before the Santa Barbara County Bar Association.

We will also be sponsoring our annual essay contest among the area high school students.

The first half of this year with our new Executive Committee members brought new ideas and changes to our chapter. For the first time, we decided to have a social media presence and under the direction of our new Publicity Committee chairs Jim Rosen and Dana Fox, we launched our own social media accounts with Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. We are reviewing other social media accounts of other chapters to get ideas, and although only in our early stages, we plan to work with our Diversity Committee and Foundation chair to promote and highlight activities and the work of our members. We also plan to update our website to make it more user friendly, and to provide more useful information on ABOTA for potential new members, and chapter information for members.

Our new Diversity Committee chair, Rahul Ravipudi, is establishing a program for diversity outreach to have lawyers go to underprivileged high schools in the fall to speak to students to inspire them to become lawyers and trial lawyers, and to work with these high schools on their mock trial programs.

As part of our commitment to diversity and inclusion, we have had excellent diverse guest speakers at our dinner meetings, including Judge Ruth Kwan, who described her amazing life journey from her birth in Hong Kong as the nineteenth child of her father who had married her mother as his fourth wife, to a judge in the civil long cause division in Los Angeles. Judge Serena Murillo spoke about her incredible path from being a daughter of a Mexican immigrant whose family picked grapes, cotton, and almonds every summer in the California Central Valley to achieving an NCAA scholarship to an Ivy League university, and ultimately becoming a judge. Our September Chapter Meeting featured guest speaker, Alice Marie Johnson, American criminal justice reform advocate and former federal prisoner.

Because of the pandemic, we did not have our annual President’s Dinner Dance until May, 2022. We were happy to have our National ABOTA President, Lewis Sifford with us, and at that dinner, we presented the Lee B. Wenzel Civility Award to Michael Schonbuch.

On July 20, 2022, we held our annual Judicial Reception on the Great Lawn at the Jonathan Town Club. We presented the Honorable Judge Ruth Kwan with the 2022 Judge of the Year and Nicole Payne as the 2022 Judicial Assistant of the Year.

We co-sponsored a Civility Matters webinar on July 26, 2022 that was presented with the President’s Advisory Committee on Women in the Legal Profession and the Small Firm & Sole Practitioners Section and featured Patricia Daehnke, Lourdes DeArmas, Lauren Lofton and Donna Maryanski. At recent meetings, we have discussed the behavior of certain members and the importance of adherence to our ABOTA Principles of Civility, Integrity, and Professionalism.

We intend to have another exciting Masters in Trial Program in the last quarter that will consist of both live and virtual components. Gary Dordick, one of our chairs for the program, is planning on having teams consisting of former Presidents of our chapter demonstrating their formidable trial skills in what should be an entertaining and educational program.

We congratulate our own John and Christa Ramey as the 2022 recipients of the CAL-ABOTA Community Service of the Year Award!

William Haggerty, President 

The Orange County Chapter held its Installation Gala Dinner at the Newport Beach Country Club on May 21, 2022. It was a tremendously fun-filled event replete with a bagpiper to introduce our new officers and a band that had everyone up and onto the dance floor. Co-trial lawyers of the year, Jennifer Russell and Steve Rosa, were honored. We also recognized our law student scholarship recipient and new members. National President Lewis Sifford was a featured speaker.

On May 16th, our Annual Golf Tournament was held at Mission Viejo Country Club. It was a sellout and proved to be the most financially successful golf tournament in our Chapter’s history.

On August 10th, we hosted a summer barbecue at the Newport Beach Marina Park Community and Sailing Center. It was a shorts and flip flops evening at the beach and a time for our members to reconnect.

We are looking forward to our annual Teachers' Law School on October 6, 2022 and our Judges' Night Dinner on October 19th where we will honor Judge Theodore Howard as the Chapter’s Judge of the Year. Judge Walter Schwarm was selected as the George Francis Judicial Civility Award recipient, and Martha Diaz was selected the Alan Slater Clerk of the Year. Our Civility Matters Programs continue to be held for law school students and for young lawyers at interested law firms.

Hon. John Pacheco, President 

This year has been busy for the San Bernardino/Riverside Chapter. In April, we held our first Chapter Dinner Meeting of the year, and on May 2, 2022, we played golf with our friends from the Los Angeles Chapter. On July 14, 2022, we held our Summer Dinner Meeting at Mitla’s Café featuring guest speaker Judicial Appointments Secretary, Luis Cespedes, who appeared via Zoom.

We are excited to announce the tremendous success of this year’s James Otis Lecture program which was held at Mitla’s Café on September 15, 2022. The program was presented to teachers and students who witnessed the re-enactment of the case of Lopez v. Seccombe. The San Bernardino/Riverside Chapter of ABOTA partnered with the San Bernardino Superior Court and the presentation was available via a live Zoom Webinar which is accessible by clicking HERE. The program was completely free for all students, teachers and educators and was attended by hundreds.

Finally, we look forward to our Judges' Night on October 13th where we will honor Justice Patricia Guerrero as our Judicial Officer of the Year and our Installation Dinner will be held in December; both events will take place at The Mission Inn.  

Stephen Grebing, President 

The Chapter is enjoying a great and productive year. We are currently vetting four new member applications. A new member (Brett Schreiber) was approved at the recent National Meeting.

We held our annual Summer Party at the residence of members Ben and Linda Bunn. The theme was, "Summer in the Sierras." Our own John Farmer Band provided live music and entertainment. In addition to great food and drink we had a s'mores bar and several open fires for cooking them. The event was well attended with 110 attendees.

The 7th Annual "Masters of Golf' tournament at Fairbanks Ranch Country Club in Rancho Santa Fe has been moved to next April. The event is sponsored by Lawyers Mutual Insurance Company. We have continued to grow the event on a year-by-year basis. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Civics Learning Partnership which promotes civics learning and curriculum in our public schools.

We are pleased to announce our nomination for the 2022 CAL-ABOTA Community Service Award was John Gomez. John's firm's mantra is, "We improve our communities" and he has been working tirelessly with San Diego's Community Youth Athletic Center, raised money for at risk youth programs through his "Battle of the Badges" boxing event, sponsored youth sports and a "Gas Me Up" event where free gas was given away to needy families. We are proud of John's continuing presence and positive influence in our community.

We are hoping to kick start our partnership with Morse High School in the fall to provide exposure to underserved high school students to opportunities in the law.

Our year ending Holiday Party will be held on December 10th at La Jolla Country Club. During the event, we will induct our new Executive Board and present our Hughes-McClennahan award to a member for outstanding and recognized professionalism, integrity and civility over the course of her/his career.

Finally, we hope to be able to put on a Masters in Trial and/or Civility Matters event next year.

The Sacramento Valley Chapter is getting ready for the year end events. We elected our slate of Executive Committee members for 2023 as follows: President – Letty Litchfield; Co-Vice Presidents – Hon. David Abbot (Ret.) and John Demas; Secretary – John Demas; Treasurer – Hon. Michael Jones; Membership Chair – Jill Telfer; At-Large Member: Bill Callaham; Immediate Past-President – Dan Kohls; National Board Representatives: Letty Litchfield, Shelley Jenni, Jill Telfer and Dan Wilcoxen. Our Membership Committee will be considering new member candidates on September 28, 2022, ahead of our full Membership Meeting on October 20, 2022 in which CAL-ABOTA President, Don Carlson, will attend.

Our annual Summer Barbecue Dinner was held on July 29, 2022, where Roger Dreyer and John Quincy Brown, III, were honored as “Legends of ABOTA." Roger Dreyer and Dan Kohls interviewed Judge Fall in an interesting MCLE webinar on August 4, 2022, with a good virtual turnout. We held our Stockton Member Mixer on August 31, 2022. John Demas and the Hon. Dave Brown (Ret.) are still in progress on another education webinar, and Letty Litchfield is heading up a webinar on Judicial Independence with the Hon. Barbara Kronlund and the Hon. Paul A. Bacigalupo with a scheduled date of October 12, 2022.

On September 29, we are delighted to host our annual Judges Appreciation Reception at the San Mateo County History Museum/Old Courthouse. The event will be held in person and we will honor judges from the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California and the San Mateo County, Santa Clara County, and Santa Cruz County Superior Courts. Also, we will present the Trial Judge of Year award to Honorable Beth Labson Freeman, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California and Honorable Robert D. Foiles, San Mateo County Superior Court. SF Chapter Treasurer, Kevin Morrison, wrote an article “Civility in the Legal Profession: It’s Up to Us to Save It”, for California Litigation. The article not only promotes the ABOTA Brand but “Civility Matters!” as well.

Our Chapter will honor Joseph Cotchett, who will receive the David B. Lynch Legends Award, at the October 26th Membership Dinner at The City Club of San Francisco. We are proud to continue our tradition of hosting the James Otis Lecture Series. The program will be held on October 28th at the U.S. District Courthouse in San Francisco. Justice Goodwin Liu, Supreme Court of California, will be one of the speakers. Our chapter is pleased to be a co-sponsor (with CAL-ABOTA and the Sacramento Chapter) of the Journalist Law School which Loyola Law School hosted on June 1st – 4th.

We presented a virtual program, "Expedited Jury Trials” on September 22nd. Then, we will present, in person, “Masters in Trial: Time Limit Trial Demonstrations with Live Jury Deliberations”, on October 14th at the Milton Marks Auditorium in San Francisco.

Our chapter is elated that Cynthia McGuinn was selected as the recipient of the CAL-ABOTA Trial Lawyer of the Year Award. We look forward to celebrating with her at the Hawaii conference on October 31st – November 5th. Our annual holiday gala will be on December 9th, at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco.

We are set to have our 2nd Annual Fall Harvest Mixer on October 22, 2022. This event is no charge to our membership and is hosted in Orange Cove by one of our Past Presidents, Rayma Church. This outdoor event is an opportunity for all our members to socialize and reengage many to be more active on our ABOTA programs. Each year we host a well-attended Christmas party at a local restaurant. We are tentatively scheduled for December 15, 2022. This will be the 4th get-together we have had this year for membership. We are constantly trying to engage more of the “old guard” to participate in chapter offices and programs.

Our Executive Board Meetings are held the 3rd Thursday of every month. With the new school year beginning, we are set for our civics education literacy programs in Fresno and Tulare Counties to read to 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders the 4 books provided from National ABOTA. In May, we had 3 Board members participate in a virtual Civility Matters seminar that was attended by approximately 100 lawyers both young and old. We are in the process of contacting all the firms in our jurisdiction to offer virtual and in-person Civility Matters programs for their young lawyers. We are also putting on a Civility Matters program at San Joaquin College of Law in January.

New Member, Kevin Thelen, has been approved by the membership and is our newest member. His father, Dennis, is also a member of our chapter. We have no new applicants and continue with outreach to the various bar associations to educate them about ABOTA. We have focused outreach to include presenting about ABOTA to be as diversified as we have ever been.