Tips from the Bench: Judge Robert Dahlquist

The Honorable Robert P. Dahlquist has been a judge for North County San Diego Superior Court for 18 years. Judge Dahlquist was born and largely raised near Salt Lake City, Utah. As the middle child of five kids, Judge Dahlquist learned many lessons from his family. He remembers seeing both his parents work hard to make a living, even though there were not many working mothers at that time. Often, his father worked two jobs (one during the day and another part-time at night). Even though Judge Dalhquist’s parents were not college-educated, they impressed on him and his siblings that education was the only way to advance, and always encouraged him to pursue education.

Judge Dahlquist received his bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University and his law degree from the University of Chicago School of Law. After law school, Judge Dahlquist took an associate position with Latham & Watkins in San Diego. Judge Dahlquist initially joined the litigation department. However, in 1980, the United States Congress enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, more commonly known as Superfund, which created broad federal authority to respond directly to releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances that may endanger public health or the environment. Judge Dahlquist was one of the first attorneys to work for Latham & Watkins’s Environmental Department, newly opened in response to the boom in environmental litigation resulting from Superfund, and he ultimately became the department’s chair.

There were various times while Judge Dahlquist was practicing law that he looked ahead to life after his attorney practice. He remembers thinking it would be fun and interesting to be a judge. His plans were accelerated when his wife at the time was diagnosed with cancer in 1997. She eventually passed away in 1999, leaving behind four kids. To be closer to home and have more regular hours to be with his kids, Judge Dahlquist pursued a position as judge in 2003.

When he first joined the bench, Judge Dahlquist remembers meeting Hon. Joan P. Weber, who was North County’s supervising judge at the time. She was an outstanding mentor to Judge Dahlquist, and taught him to be calm and deliberate in the courtroom. He remembers that Judge Weber’s advice was to not become embroiled in the controversy, because a judge needs to be the one in the room who is calm, careful, and deliberate. “Judge Weber was all those things,” Judge Dahlquist commented.

Judge Dahlquist was first assigned to family law for three years, where he experienced a steep learning curve. He went from having a handful of active matters in his private practice to thousands of cases as a judge. Before the courts had electronic files, he remembers taking home a stack of case files each night to read. He recalls being fortunate because he had four colleagues who were also family law judges. They created a very collegial environment where they would go to lunch at least once a week, creating opportunities for “on-the-job training” from his colleagues.

Over his past 28 years on the bench, Judge Dahlquist has worked in both the criminal and civil departments and served one term as supervising judge for North County. He currently works in the Civil Department.

Judge Dahlquist advises lawyers appearing by video or telephone to treat the appearance with the same solemnity as an in-person hearing. He is personally in favor of remote appearances, especially for hearings such as case management conferences (CMC), where lawyers can wait at the courthouse for hours for only a minute appearance. However, there are issues that are hard to ignore, such as the court overhearing a lawyer having an independent and completely unrelated conversation with a client; this is both distracting and unprofessional.

Within the last several months, Judge Dahlquist recalls conducting four or five jury trials in person, and double that amount for bench trials. While the jury trials were in person, the court provided parties the option to have a remote bench trial. Judge Dahlquist also had a handful of completely remote bench trials, some trials that were a hybrid of in person and remote, and jury trials that were completely in person except for one or two remote witnesses. He remarked, “To everyone’s surprise, there has been no problem getting or selecting jurors.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way Judge Dahlquist manages his court calendar in several ways. As a result of the pandemic, Judge Dahlquist now sets out trial dates one year out — four months longer than his pre-pandemic date-setting practice. However, he tries to avoid continuing hearings such as CMCs to prevent the court staff and parties from having to do extra work. Instead, Judge Dahlquist will set trial dates and give the parties the opportunity to stipulate if they need additional time. He has also limited his questioning of prospective jurors to reduce the time large jury pools have to spend in a single room. As this is the only time it is necessary to have a large number of people in the courtroom, Judge Dahlquist shortens the questioning process so the jury can be picked quicker.

Regarding motion practice, Judge Dahlquist advises new attorneys to write exactly what they want, particularly when it comes to identifying damages or other relief. Many parties spend much of their time proving or disproving liability, but very little on calculating a plaintiff’s damages. Plaintiffs are generally (but not always) good at calculating damages, and the defense sometimes skips damages altogether to focus solely on why there is no liability. However, in an abundance of caution, defense lawyers should figure out what the damages should be if they lose on liability.

Judge Dahlquist recommends attending as many hearings and trials as possible, either remotely or in person. One of the benefits of watching proceedings in person is the ability interact with the bailiff and court clerk, both of whom are great sources of information. If attending in person is not possible, you can, for the first time, sit in your home or office and watch all types of hearings virtually from San Diego Superior Court’s website. Judge Dahlquist strongly encourages attorneys who plan on trying cases to a jury to watch someone else try a case because you can learn so much from watching others — and these lessons cannot be found in a book.