Susan L. Greenberg Admonished

Susan L. Greenberg, a San Mateo County Superior Court judge, was publicly admonished by the California Commission on Judicial Performance for abusing her authority and disregarding a civil litigant's fundamental due process rights. The case arose on June 14, 2022, in a civil harassment restraining order hearing, Lopez v. Chicas. The matter had first been called by a different judge, at which point the defendant and his attorney were briefly not present; when Greenberg took over the hearing, she summarily denied the defendant and his attorney — who were present and ready to proceed — the right to participate or present any evidence, calling their earlier tardiness "unacceptable," and issued a permanent restraining order based solely on the petitioner's testimony. In imposing the admonishment, the Commission cited Greenberg's prior disciplinary history as an aggravating factor: she had been privately admonished in 2017 for failing to disclose campaign contributions from attorneys who appeared before her, and the Commission separately noted a child custody matter in which she appointed a guardian ad litem without notifying the affected litigant or allowing an objection.