Former prosecutor, family law judge seeks full 12-year appellate term 

In a February opinion, Justice Gregory J. Weingart wrote for the court in ordering $1.3 billion cut from a judgment in a decades-long family fight over real estate partnerships unless any of the plaintiffs chose a new trial on his damages portion.

In Jogani v. Jogani (2026), three brothers sued their brother Haresh over his management of partnership assets. Their expert had disclosed a $445 million loss from investments sold in 2008, but at trial he testified that the investments would have grown to $1.98 billion had they instead tracked the S&P 500. Weingart wrote that the new theory had not been fairly disclosed, leaving the defense without a fair opportunity to respond. Each brother must accept a reduction proportionate to his partnership share, a combined $1.3 billion, or face a new trial on his economic and punitive damages, the opinion stated.

Weingart, a justice of the 2nd District Court of Appeal, Division 1, since November 2022, is seeking a full 12-year term on the Nov. 3 ballot in his first retention election.

A very different dispute drew on Weingart's family law background. In R.M. v. A.G. (2026), former partners each sought a domestic violence restraining order. The trial judge focused on events after their breakup and issued an order only against the woman. Weingart reversed both rulings, writing that courts must consider the totality of the circumstances, including conduct during the relationship and indirect harassment, such as the man's calls to her mother and social media profiles he changed to insult her and impersonate her business.

His opinions also extend into criminal law. Weingart decided a question of first impression under a 2022 law giving defendants a jury trial on aggravating factors used to justify upper-term sentences: whether their lawyers may argue those factors to the jury. They may, he wrote in People v. Cardenas (2026), and the court reversed the jury's findings on the aggravating factors and vacated the upper-term sentence for a firearm enhancement imposed on a man convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old. On remand, prosecutors may retry the aggravating factors or accept a middle-term sentence for the enhancement.

Those opinions draw on a career that has moved between criminal law, complex civil litigation and family law. Weingart came to the bench after more than two decades as a federal prosecutor and private attorney handling white-collar crime and complex litigation. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1991, he clerked for U.S. District Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr. of the Central District from 1991 to 1992, then joined Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP as an associate.

From 1995 to 2004, he was an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, focusing on white-collar and corporate crime, and became chief of the office's Major Frauds Section. He returned to Munger Tolles in 2004 and spent nearly 15 years as a partner, handling complex civil litigation, criminal defense and internal investigations.

Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him to the Los Angeles County Superior Court in December 2017. He presided primarily over family law matters before serving as a justice pro tem in Division 1 from 2019 to 2020, then returned to Superior Court. He worked on court committees and initiatives focused on domestic violence victims.

When a restraining order request also sought custody or visitation changes, he told the Daily Journal in 2019, he split the hearing so the domestic violence allegations would be addressed first. Except in rare, extreme cases, he said, parents should keep at least minimal contact with their children.

"Kids need to have some kind of relationship if at all possible with their parents," he said.

"He's read everything, and he's there to entertain an intelligent discussion about what the result ought to be," Sherman Oaks family law attorney Gary Fishbein said in 2019.

Off the bench, Weingart serves on the board of Teach Democracy, a nonprofit that promotes civics education for elementary and high school students. He is also on the Judicial Council's advisory committee for the Center for Judicial Education and Research and the California Judges Association's appellate courts committee.