Judicate West, one of California’s leading providers of private dispute resolution services, has added Judge Geoffrey Goodman to its roster of neutrals. Based out of the Sacramento office, Judge Goodman is available statewide as a mediator, arbitrator, and private judge.
“Judge Goodman has worn many different hats – judge, deputy district attorney, U.S. Attorney, and civil litigator. Throughout the entirety of his legal career, he has had a notably high settlement rate for the Settlement Department in the Sacramento County Superior Court, having mediated more than 500 cases. His rare combination of experiences will prove beneficial to our clients statewide,” said Rosemarie Chiusano Aubert, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of Business Development with Judicate West. “Judge Goodman built an excellent reputation as a trial judge, and he is known in the community as fair, intelligent and respectful. We are thrilled to offer his services as a neutral.”
For more than 15 years, Judge Goodman served on the Sacramento County Superior Court bench as an active and assigned judge. For most of his judicial career, he was in a general trial assignment, presiding over all types of complex civil and criminal matters. He retired from the bench in 2022, and he served on an assignment basis for the past two years as the court’s Supervising Civil Settlement Judge whereby he conducted hundreds of settlement conferences and supervised attorneys acting as judges pro tem.
Judge Goodman began his career as a deputy district attorney with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, helping launch the office’s hardcore gang unit. He was a Deputy Attorney General for the California Attorney General’s Office and founding member of the Major Fraud Unit, before he was promoted to serve as a Senior Assistant Attorney General, overseeing attorneys, auditors and law enforcement agents statewide. Judge Goodman also served as chief of white-collar criminal prosecutions for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California. He spent a decade in private practice, focusing on civil litigation and white-collar defense, before his appointment to the bench in 2009.
Judge Goodman served as a consultant for the California Assembly Committee on Criminal Justice from 1981-1984, where he analyzed, drafted and negotiated legislative proposals relating to criminal law. He is a former member of the Sacramento County Bar Association and the Anthony M. Kennedy American Inn of Court. Judge Goodman received his J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law (1976) and his B.A. from the University of Southern California (1973).
