Delbert Gee

Delbert Gee is a retired Alameda County Superior Court Judge who served for 20 years until 2022, presiding over both civil and criminal cases.

He began his legal career in 1980 as a Deputy District Attorney in Ventura County where he tried 33 jury trials to verdict, and then spent the next 20 years in private practice as a civil litigator in San Francisco.

He graduated from the Santa Clara University School of Law as a member of the Law Review, and received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Davis as a first generation college student.

Judicial Career

Gee was a judge of the Superior Court of California (US) for the County of Alameda, and presided primarily over a civil direct calendar and trial court and a criminal felony and misdemeanor calendar and trial court during his 20 year judicial career, beginning with his appointment by the Governor of the State of California in 2002.

He also presided over a probate, conservatorship, and guardianship court, collaborative and drug courts, and a juvenile dependency and delinquency court.

He was the last judge to preside over criminal cases in the Alameda courthouse, and he presided over two civil jury trials conducted entirely by video during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was a member of the court's executive committee, and was the supervising judge of the court's probate division and of the Alameda courthouse.

In 2002, he was honored by the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area, and was presented in 2010 with the Judicial Distinguished Service Award by the Alameda County Bar Association and a resolution in his honor by the California State Assembly.

Legal career

Gee became a member of the State Bar of California in May 1980 and began his legal career as a Deputy District Attorney in Ventura County where he tried 33 jury trials to verdict as the county's first Asian-Pacific Islander American prosecutor.

He then spent the next 20 years in San Francisco as a civil litigator, first as an associate with Hassard, Bonnington, Rogers & Huber and then with Bronson, Bronson & McKinnon, and later as a partner with Sturgeon, Keller, Phillips, Gee & O'Leary PC and then as a founding partner of the Pacific West Law Group LLP.

He specialized in the fields of health and liability insurance litigation, medical malpractice litigation, and health care law, and is an experienced mediator.

Education

Gee graduated from the University of California, Davis with a bachelor of arts degree in political science in 1977 where he was a Congressional intern in Washington, D.C. during the Bicentennial summer of 1976, and was co-chair of the campus Media Board.

He then graduated from the Santa Clara University School of Law in December 1979 where he was an associate editor of the Santa Clara Law Review, and clerked for the Criminal Division of the office of the U.S. Attorney in San Jose.

Background

Gee was a first generation college student who was born and raised in Alameda County by immigrant parents who never had an opportunity to attend college. He has been active for decades in numerous professional, civic, and service organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area, and continues to be a sustaining member of the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area (AABA) where he founded the AABA Judges Scholarship.

See also

• Judiciary of California
• Alameda County Superior Court
• Hayward Hall of Justice
• List of Asian American jurists
• List of University of California, Davis alumni
• Livermore High School
• Bazaar Canton
• Taishanese people
• Shanghainese people