Candidate for
Judge-Superior Court; County of Los Angeles; Office 73

Judge Matz has served as a judge of both the Municipal and Superior Courts of Los Angeles County for almost 14 years. She began her judicial career as a Municipal Court judge in the Glendale Judicial District in July 1996, where she presided over a criminal court that handled misdemeanor cases as well as felony preliminary hearings. She became a Superior Court judge in January of 2000. For the last nine years, she has presided over a general jurisdiction civil court in the Glendale courthouse where she handles a case load of more than 500 cases. Over the course of her career, she has presided over more than 100 jury trials, 50 bench trials and hundreds of small claims trials, traffic trials and uncontested default prove up hearings. Added to that are the myriad of cases in which she has participated in settlement.

Judge Matz has served as the Presiding Judge of the Glendale Municipal Court and as the Site Judge for the Los Angeles Superior Court in the Glendale courthouse. She also has served on the Executive Committee of the Los Angeles Superior Court. In addition to managing her case workload, she now manages the CRASH program for the North Central District of the Los Angeles Superior Court. The CRASH program, an acronym for Civil Referee Assisted Settlement Hearing, matches volunteer settlement officers with cases from all four of the general civil courts in the North Central District. The settlements it achieves are responsible for saving the people of the County hundreds of thousands of dollars in trial costs and hundreds of days of jury service time yearly.

In 1999, she was assigned for six months as an Associate Justice Pro Tem in Division Six of the Second Appellate District of the California Court of Appeal. Again, in 2001, she sat for an additional three month term as an Associate Justice Pro Tem in Division Two of the same district of the Court of Appeal. During both assignments, she heard and determined appeals dealing with both criminal and civil matters.

Judge Matz received her BA degree in 1975 from UCLA and is a 1981 graduate from the UCLA School of Law. Upon graduation from law school, she joined the law firm of Overton, Lyman & Prince, where she engaged in probate, trust and asbestos litigation. In 1984, she joined the firm of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, in its litigation section, where she practiced general commercial litigation until her appointment to the bench. In the year prior to her appointment, she spent a significant portion of her time representing the Department of Children and Family Services in appeals from dependency matters.

Before going to law school, Judge Matz had a variety of experience. Upon graduation from college, she worked in the medical records department of the UCLA Medical Center reviewing charts to code them for research purposes. Shortly thereafter, she developed an interest in the law and completed UCLA's paralegal studies course. She worked as a legal assistant at Adams, Duque and Hazeltine and later in the legal department of United California Bank, which ultimately led to her commitment to attend law school.

Judge Matz has been a member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, the California Judge's Association and the Kiwanis Club of Glendale.

The Judicial Elections Evaluation Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association has evaluated her as "Well Qualified" for Superior Court Office No. 73 because she possesses "the professional ability, experience, competence, integrity and temperament indicative of superior fitness to perform the judicial function with a high degree of skill and effectiveness." In a opinion piece of April 23, 2010, the Los Angeles Times wrote that "voters should keep Matz," calling her an "outstanding judge [who] is being challenged for no good reason." The complete article can be viewed at: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-court-20100424-19,0,6062471.story.

The Metropolitan News, a legal newspaper, Sheriff Lee Baca, District Attorney Steve Cooley, and numerous members of the judiciary and legal community endorse her as well.