He Handles Complex Civil Litigation, Including Insurance And Environmental Cases

Gov. Gray Davis yesterday named two court commissioners and two practicing lawyers to the San Diego Superior Court.

Commissioners Patricia Garcia and Theodore Weathers, civil litigator Robert P. Dahlquist, and corporate attorney Randa M. Trapp were named to succeed retired Judges Thomas Ashworth, Lawrence Stirling, Jesus Rodriguez, and Philip Sharp.

Garcia, 42, has been hearing child support cases since being named a commissioner three years ago. She practiced family law in San Diego from 1989 until her appointment as commissioner, sitting as a judge pro tem and Superior Court arbitrator during that time.

Garcia is a graduate of UC San Diego and the University of San Diego Law School. Her organizational affiliations include the La Raza Lawyers Association of San Diego and California Women Lawyers.

Weathers, 47, has been a commissioner since 2000. He hears pretrial criminal matters in his current assignment, after having previously tried civil and criminal cases.

A onetime Manhattan prosecutor, he worked for the pharmaceutical firm of CIBA-Geigy, overseeing products liability defense, then started his own firm. He came to California in 1990 and was a San Diego deputy public defender before becoming a commissioner.

He is a member of the Lawyers Club of San Diego and the Tom Homann Law Association, an organization of gay, lesbian, and bisexual lawyers. He is a graduate of Rutgers University and New York Law School.

Dahlquist, 46, has been with Latham & Watkins since 1982, and is now a San Diego-based partner in the firm and chairman of the office’s Environment, Land and Resources Department. He handles complex civil litigation, including insurance and environmental cases, and was one of the lead attorneys in the massive Stringfellow toxic tort litigation in Riverside.

He has been active in local charities and is a graduate of Brigham Young University and the University of Chicago Law School.

Trapp, 48, is an attorney with Sempra Energy, whose holdings include San Diego Gas & Electric Company. She was a deputy attorney general from 1985 to 1989, spending seven months of that period as a special deputy district attorney in San Diego.

She spent five years with a local civil firm before joining her present employer.

Trapp also teaches at the University of San Diego Law School, has served as a county hearing officer and small claims judge pro tem, and is a past president of the San Diego Chapter of the NAACP.

She has served on numerous community boards, including the Community Advisory Board on Racial Profiling appointed by the chief of police. She is a graduate of San Jose State University and the Georgetown University Law Center.