By Greg Mitchell

Wes Walker got his litigation chops at Rutan & Tucker, a Costa Mesa-based mid-sized firm where he spent 18 years, including some as managing partner. As a Napa County Superior Court judge, he was said to be a driving force behind the court's rapid consolidation of municipal and superior courts.

Walker has cranked out 21 opinions in his first two years as an appellate justice, coming down for both plaintiffs and corporations, prosecutors and criminal defendants. He is described as active and engaged during oral argument.

The Supreme Court recently moved to review his ruling in People v. Falsetta, 64 Cal.App.4th 291, in which he blamed a rape defendant's verbose jury instruction for a trial judge's failure to instruct the jury on evidence of other crimes. "The trial judge had no duty to dig through the dross of a lengthy, incorrect, and misleading proposed instruction, like a pig after truffles, in order to unearth the appropriate morsel of law," Walker wrote.

In another opinion of note, he threw out misdemeanor convictions against a group of Vallejo abortion protesters because their was no evidence they had acted "in concert" to violate an injunction.

Walker's Division Three is the second slowest panel on the First District in processing appeals, with median time from briefing to decision in civil appeals of 202 days, 142 for criminal.