Former Justice Panelli dies

The Mercury News is reporting that former Supreme Court Justice Edward Panelli has died. The report includes an extended obituary that begins, “Justice Edward Panelli, who rose from a hardscrabble childhood in Depression-era Santa Clara Valley to the state’s highest court, died Saturday evening in Saratoga at the age of 92.”

Justice Panelli was appointed by Governor George Deukmejian and served on the court from December 1985 until January 1994. He replaced Justice Otto Kaus and was succeeded on the bench by Justice Kathryn Werdegar, who, before her appointment to the Court of Appeal, had served as Panelli’s senior staff attorney. Panelli had previously been the first presiding justice of the Sixth District Court of Appeal and also a justice of the First District, and before that a judge of the Santa Clara Superior Court.

News reports discussed Panelli’s tangential involvement in the Tom Girardi scandal as a private judge long after his retirement from the court.

Panelli’s oral history was published in the 2022 edition of the California Supreme Court Historical Society’s journal, California Legal History.