Jacob Davis

00:01

Jacob T Davis, here Woodbridge real estate with

Jarod Evenson

00:05

you got Jared Evanson over here, and you got a special guest today, Jacob,

Jacob Davis

00:09

we got my man, the Honorable Roger Sandberg, running for a Whitman County Superior Court Judge, Roger, how you doing today?

Roger Sandberg

00:19

Great, Jacob. Thank you for having me. Jacob and Jared, yeah, it’s a good day. Happy to be here. Thank you.

Jacob Davis

00:29

Awesome. So Roger, you are running for judge. Tell us what a little bit, a little bit about your background, your legal experience, kind of you know how you got into this whole Superior Court Judge deal?

Roger Sandberg

00:49

Sure. Yeah, so I’m from Moses Lake originally, and grew up there, went to high school there, graduated, then went to Whitworth College in Spokane, then went to law school. After that, ended up in Pullman about, you know, right after law school. So, I’ve been here since 2008 and just been living in Pullman practice. And law got three kids, 1614, and 11 and so, yeah, just been at the same office building the entire career, last 17 and a half years. It’s private practice, so doing a little bit of everything that walks in the door, criminal cases, Family Law, Cases, evictions, protection orders, I mean, all sorts of things. So, it’s small-town law, it’s good, it’s good work, life balance. You know, we kind of came over here. Could have got a job in Seattle or something, but things are cheaper over here. So yeah, we’re glad to be here, and then I’ve been doing so yeah, I’ve been a lawyer for about 17 and a half years. Just a couple years after we got here, they started asking me to do what’s called Pro Tim judge work, where you’re basically filling in for the judge when he’s gone. So been doing that for about 14 years. So yeah, happy to be in Pullman. I think they’ve, I guess, I guess I’m the Pullman at this point, lived here about as long as any other place in my life.

Jacob Davis

02:28

So, yeah. So, so you’re running, like I said, for superior court judge. Currently, that’s Judge liby is the superior court judge. Can you tell us a little bit about what the superior court judge does,

Roger Sandberg

02:42

yeah? So, yeah, you’re right. So, Whitman County has one Superior Court Judge right now. It’s Gary livey. He’s been there for the last seven years. It’ll be, you know, he’ll finish up his term at the end of this calendar year. That’ll be eight years. Judge before him was David Frazier. Whitman County’s got one superior court judge. You know, other counties around the state, it depends on your population. So, King County’s got like 54 judges. Spokane has got 13 judges. I think Snohomish has 17 judges, and you know, we’ve got one and then, you know, asot and Garfield and Columbia counties share one judge, so it kind of just depends on your population. So yeah, Superior Court is the general trial court for the county. So, you’re going to hear felony cases. Their family law cases, a variety of civil cases, you know, juvenile anything that, basically, anything that involves children, is going to be in Superior Court compared to District Court, which is where you hear misdemeanor cases, small claims, traffic tickets. We’ve got one district court judge in Whitman County, who’s John Hart and so, yeah. So that’s kind of what the superior court judge does. I mean, you’re hearing a lot of cases, you know, on this real estate podcast, you know, we’re hearing evictions. We’re hearing, you know, land disputes between neighbors, property line disputes, boundary disputes, things like that. Any you know. So now, if there’s a land, if there’s tenants have a dispute about who’s responsible for their half of the rent, that might be in district court for a small claims case, but yeah, evictions are going to be in superior court. So yeah, big, big cases too. I mean, here, you know, cases like the, this last year, the PAC 12 case, the PAC two case, was decided in Whitman County Superior Court with the, you know, I mean, that had major, major implications for, you know, all of the comp, all the schools in the Pac 12. Of course, you’re going to hear a lot of, you know, serious. A felony criminal cases as well. So, yeah, that’s kind of what the Spirit court judge does.

Jarod Evenson

05:07

Let’s, let’s talk about that, that PAC 12 thing, for a quick second. Jacob and Roger, yeah, that that’s, that was a big deal for that to actually be able to come through Pullman, and what, what led that through? Pullman, that whole because that’s involved in California, schools, Oregon, schools, Washington, schools, Arizona is how did we get that here? It actually came through, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Roger Sandberg

05:33

It’s a it was so WSU was the plaintiff, the one who filed the lawsuit, and they just chose to file it in Whitman County Superior Court. And so, I mean what specifically was going on is that I think the PAC 12 president or director wanted to call a meeting amongst all the schools and vote on some things, and WSU asked for an injunction saying, hey, these, these other people aren’t members of the PAC 12. You can’t hold this meeting. And so, so they filed, WSU, filed a lawsuit in Whitman County Superior Court. And you know that that was a strategic decision by them. They, they it could have been a federal case potentially. If you have parties that are, you know, in different states, you have what’s called diversity jurisdiction, and you can file federal cases, the other schools could have potentially sought to remove the case to federal court. They didn’t, I mean, that’s a strategic decision from on their part. I don’t know why, you know, I don’t know all of the reasons why they did the things they did. But yeah, WSU filed it here. We had a hearing; I think it was filed on a Thursday. Had a hearing on a Monday, I believe, and and then, you know, that was sort of a preliminary decision. And then within a month, or, you know, six weeks, had a second, you know, sort of the final trial court decision, and then it was immediately appealed to the Washington State Supreme Court, who essentially affirmed what the trial court had done. And from there, the party settled. You know, I don’t know the terms of the settlement. But yeah, cases dove,

Jarod Evenson

07:24

yeah, I think, I think Oregon State and Washington State considered it a win, whatever those terms.

Roger Sandberg

07:29

Yeah. I mean, they, they certainly won at the trial court level, and yeah, that certainly strengthened their bargaining position, I’m sure. So so go Cougs.

Jarod Evenson

07:41

I mean, that was might not have won the apple, might not have won the Apple Cup, but we won the court cup.

Jacob Davis

07:52

So so yeah, I just thought it was interesting that you know a local judge, because they, I mean, they could have asked for a different judge right to to overhear the case.

Roger Sandberg

08:08

Yeah, they could. So, each each party in a lawsuit has the right to file what’s called an affidavit of prejudice or a notice of disqualification before the judge makes a discretionary decision. So, they could have come in on Monday morning and and they don’t have to give a reason why. They just say, hey, I don’t want this judge. I don’t feel I’m going to and they just file that, and it’s automatic. They have to a new judge. Has to be assigned and throw so for our Whitman County process would be a go through Spokane. Spokane administrative would determine who the judge would be, and it’s just sort of on a rotational basis. Could be from Spokane, could be from as open County, Adams County, Lincoln County, but anyway, yeah, they chose to just proceed, and I don’t, I’m sure they have their reasons, but yeah,

Jarod Evenson

09:07

there has, there’s been some high-profile cases that the judge that would be in your seat have had between, you know, Gary Leiby having that one, and we all know David Frazier had a really Well nationally known, very sad case years ago as well. So, a lot of pressure, I guess, yeah, wow.

Roger Sandberg

09:27

A lot of pressure, yeah. I mean, yeah, Dave Frazier had that decision involved in Fred Russell. And I mean, those criminal cases are serious. And unfortunately, it seems like in the last year or so there been a few more of them in Whitman County is a couple murders pending right now. You know at least one is filed as first-degree murders. Another, they might be sort of manslaughter or second-degree murder. But yeah, there’s some serious violent you. Felonies pending in Whitman County right now. And of course, across the border, we got the case in Moscow, which is a serious case Whitman County had a played a small role in that, in that the Whitman County judge had to sign a search warrant for Mr. COVID or his apartment, which is located in Whitman County. So, and then, yeah, I mean, we had this national, nationally high profile, you know, child kidnapping in the last couple weeks. There’s a lot of things going on with that case still. I mean, they chose to file charges in federal court, so there’s not a criminal case pending for that in Whitman County court, but there’s a lot of other things going on, a lot of search warrant search warrants were issued through Whitman County. So yeah.

Jacob Davis

10:50

So do you as like, when you’re running? Do you say you’re Republican or you’re Democrat, or how does that all?

Roger Sandberg

11:02

It’s get asked that a lot, and it’s I’m neither. First of all, just I personally am neither. I don’t belong to either political party. I’ve voted for people from both parties in the past. Kind of just depends on the individual, depends on the issue, you know, as far as how I feel about but the judge position is is required to be nonpartisan. There are some elections in the state of Washington which are just required to be nonpartisan. This is one of those. And so, it’s not a partisan just, you know, in the judicial case, that’s so that people will feel they get a fair shot when they come to court. You know, if I am running as a Republican or a Democrat, some person who’s of the other political persuasion might feel they’re not going to get a fair case. So, so, yeah, it’s, it’s not a part and that’s, there’s a good reason for that, and so, and just me personally, that’s kind of where I lie anyway. So, so yeah, that’s get, that’s probably most common question I get asked. So, yeah,

Jarod Evenson

12:17

what? So What? What? Running for judge outside of signs and yards and things that, what? How does, how does one get the word out, you’re doing door knocking and that kind of thing?

Roger Sandberg

12:31

Yes, yes, we’re doing everything. And we it’s, it’s the parades you’re doing, door knocking. I think, you know, I said the other day, I think I did seven praises but no, I was thinking more. I’ve done 10 parades so far. We did St John Garfield, Rosalia, TECO, oaks, Dale, Albion Johnson, of course. And La Crosse Colfax, and then lentil fest, Pullman. So, we’ve done 10 parades. We got one more to go. Yeah. I mean, you’re, you’re just doing a lot, I mean, doing a lot of door knocking, of course, you know, advertising and newspapers, social media, just trying to get the word out. That’s it. It’s, yeah, it’s kind of an interesting process, running an election for Judge, you know. I mean, of course, at the end of the day, a judge is not, is supposed to be independent, is supposed to not favor anybody, but it’s an elected position. So you go out and you’re trying to get endorsements, you know, I’ve got endorsements from, of course, the the current judge, Gary lively, the guy and the judge before him, David treasure but also from you know a lot of law enforcement people, Sheriff Brett Myers County, Prosecutor Dennis Tracy and those kind of you know, people who are part of the criminal justice system. I mean, those are important endorsements to have. I’m glad I have them, but it does feel a little awkward, because, you know, people think, oh, you’re always going to rule for the sheriff or for the prosecutor, and that’s not the case. You know, I think those two individuals in particular, just have seen me in court. I’ve dealt with him. I mean, you know, really, they’ve both been in office the entire time I’ve been a lawyer, so I’ve been dealing with them the last 17 and a half years. They know I am fair. I can do a good job. And so, I think that’s the reason they’re endorsing me. It’s not because I’m going to rule in their favor all the time. But, yeah, it’s, it’s you’re just out doing, doing everything. I mean, Gary Liebe announced back in, I think it was back in fall or winter of 2023 that he was just going to finish out his term and then not run again, and he endorsed me in that announcement. And then it’s basically been since then that I’ve kind of been just getting out there, uh, spreading the word, putting up signs. I put up signs pretty early I recognize I put them up. Pretty early. They’ve been up a long time, but it’s, it’s been a long process. So yeah, we got another two months to go, less than two months before balance will be in mailboxes again. So gotta just keep doing it.

Jacob Davis

15:15

So, I was just gonna say that. So, you got two, two months left, and then as soon as, let’s say, you get elected, then you start, like, the next day you replace Gary Leiby. Is there any kind of, like, transition, yeah. How’s that work?

Roger Sandberg

15:34

Election Day is November 5, and you’ll get some preliminary results that evening. But you won’t get the lecture. Won’t be finalized certified until, you know, three weeks later, I believe, and then, no, yeah, I would take office in January. I don’t know the specific date, but yeah, there’d be a swearing in process. And then you then you begin, and I’ve already been doing. I’m currently a court commissioner, so I’m already on the bench from time to time. So, you know, I’ve already, I already own the robe. I’m ready to go, so just step right in and keep going as thinking of something.

Jarod Evenson

16:21

So, is Gary retiring? Like, is he gonna Is he done practice or that? Probably, yeah, he heard a rumor that, I heard a rumor that his golf cart got stolen right after it got delivered. So, he’s gonna pick up something other than golf.

Roger Sandberg

16:40

Well, he did. It got stolen, but they were able to recover it.

Jarod Evenson

16:43

They recovered. Oh, they did. I never did. The outcome of that?

Roger Sandberg

16:47

Yeah, they were able to track the guys down. And so, he’s got the golf cart back and had some damage to it, but he’ll be able to continue to golf. He’s not presiding over that case. He we have to have that judge is presiding over that case.

Jarod Evenson

17:10

Yeah, his his son, Patrick, was selling a house for he sold my Patrick live. He sold my house for me, and he called me one day, and you’re not going to believe what happened to the judges. No, yeah, anyhow, back on track,

Roger Sandberg

17:25

golf course and steel, I think, I mean, I think the sheriffs took that one pretty seriously. So, yeah, bad decisions.

Jacob Davis

17:36

So what? I just had a question, what would you do differently than Liebe as as the new superior court judge?

Roger Sandberg

17:46

I mean, you just, you know, that’s the thing about running for judges. You’re not, there’s not a particular agenda that you’re pushing. You know, you’re not trying to say, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, you know, always rule in favor of mothers, or always rule in favor of fathers, or, you know, I mean, every case is different, so there’s not really a particular agenda that you’re pushing. You just, you know, really, you’re running on just saying, Hey, I’m the best person for the job. I’ve got the most experience. I know what I’m doing. I mean, running for judges, you got to have a certain amount of technical knowledge to be a to run for Judge, you have to be a, you know, an active lawyer in good standing in state of Washington, to run for a judge, you can’t just, you know, the anybody off the street, you know, is Not Allowed legally to run for Judge. So, you just got to that. You’re just kind of saying, Listen, I’ve done every type of case. It’s going to come before the court the best person for the job, and that’s it. So, I mean, really, you’re just going to do a good job at the position. I mean, there are some little things that some people probably aren’t aware of that. I think we could do differently. For example, you know, Superior Court doesn’t have a probation department. Whitman County District Court has a probation department, but Superior Court doesn’t, and so we so that shows up in a couple different ways. You know, it pretrial services. We don’t have a pretrial services department. So, if somebody gets arrested for, you know, a drug offense, and you say, okay, I’m going to release you, you know, on on bail or without bail, whatever, but I’m going to make you subject to you ways. You got to take you ways while this case is pending. Well, how do you enforce that? I mean, who’s doing the UAS and so what we’ve been doing is we’ve been relying on the juvenile department. To do the UAS for us, which, and we’re really not, you know, paying the juvenile probation office or any more money to do that, but we’ve kind of been just saying, hey, why don’t you do these, you know? And there’s, there’s a lot of other things. I mean, District Court has some scram devices, which is one of these ankle bracelets that detects alcohol, and they put those on people routinely as a pretrial release condition to determine whether they’re consuming alcohol. We don’t we. You know, District Court has those bracelets, and Superior Court doesn’t have any of those. So, you know, if I wanted to say if there was an alcohol related offense, and I want to say, hey, I want you to wear one of these bracelets, person has to pay for it themselves, essentially, which most people can’t do in the criminal system. Anyway, it usually costs about with an installation fee, about 450 bucks for the first month. You know, 300 bucks a month thereafter, and the types of people that are coming through the court can’t pay that. So anyway, so that’s one big I mean, I think we need to have and then that’s just pretrial, post-conviction. If somebody gets convicted and you say, okay, you know, here as part of your sentence, I want you to do community service. I want you to do drug treatment. You to do drug treatment. You got to get into treatment. You got to do treatment. And if you don’t, then you know we’re going to you. I’m sorry were we looked like we stopped recording for a second.

Jarod Evenson

21:48

It when you’re someone’s your phone must been ring, but it’s we’re back. Okay?

Roger Sandberg

21:55

So, yeah, I mean, if you, if you tell somebody to get into treatment, you kind of just, there’s nobody to help them do that. There’s nobody to point them in the right direction, nobody to tell them where to go. And so, it’s just like, Okay, here’s your sentence. Good luck. We’ll see you in a couple months and see if you’ve done anything. And that just doesn’t work. So now some of the sentences in superior court are going to be supervised by the State Department of Corrections if it’s a more serious type of offense, or somebody’s going to prison or something like that. So, there is some supervision for different types of cases. But anyway, it’s a big that’s a big gap. There’s some other things you know, that I think could be done a little more smoothly, but yeah, basically, you’re just trying to do the job the best it can be done. And a lot of it, you know, requires the county commissioners to help out with a little bit of funding. You know, that’s a big problem. One of the reasons we don’t have, you know, probation department, but I think everybody could get on board and see there’s some obvious benefit to the community to do it, to provide some funding for that.

Jacob Davis

23:07

Sorry,

Jarod Evenson

23:14

what do you think about those scram devices and how a lot of people’s spouses are like, how can I get my hands on one of those when my husband goes golfing,

Roger Sandberg

23:22

yeah, you can do them. You can, you can do that. You got portable breath test devices you could pay for Absolutely there’s some things that’ll help fund it.

Jarod Evenson

23:31

There we go. There you go.

Roger Sandberg

23:33

Cut that out. Jacob,

Jacob Davis

23:38

so, so what do you see as the biggest challenge going into your, your, your, judge, Judge, hood, what do you call it? What do you call it? Your, your, what do you see? Because, I mean, I, you know, on the real estate side of things, I see some huge challenges. You know, for for property owners, it seems like real estate rights are being taken away from them every day, like this, especially in Washington State. They’re, they’re really trying to, you know, take away property rights from property owners, especially people that own rental properties. It’s really hard to the the tenant law seems like it, it’s kind of backwards. So, what do you think? How do you feel on that?

Roger Sandberg

24:29

I mean it, yeah, no, no question. It’s it’s hard to evict a tenant in Washington State. I don’t know how it compares to other states, but I think it’s intentionally hard to evict somebody in Washington state that’s been sort of the legislative decision to say, hey, if you want it, and that it was hard before the pandemic, and the legislature, you know, intentionally made it, you know, there’s an eviction moratorium. Him for pretty much throughout the entire pandemic. Believe it passed some laws that made it even harder post pandemic to evict. So now you have to kind of work out a payment plan or offer a payment plan. So, there’s just some additional steps that that you got to jump through. Tenants are, can be given an attorney in eviction proceedings, you know, without cost to them. So, yeah, that’s a legislative decision to make it hard to evict people I, you know, I just, my job as a judge is just to follow the law. I mean, there are some pretty specific statutes that have to be followed. My job is as an attorney in advising people. I’ve represented tenants, I’ve represented landlords. You know, honestly, after the pandemic and these eviction moratoriums, I stopped representing landlords because it was just too, I was afraid of screwing something up. And there’s so many new laws, and landlords were frequently getting hit with Attorney fees or saying, hey, you screwed up the process. You have to pay the tenants attorney fees. And I didn’t want to be the lawyer that screwed that up and and frankly, it was sort of a small part of my practice anyway. So, I said, Listen, I’m not gonna, you know, not gonna take the risk. I’ll refer you to somebody who’s doing more of those evictions, you know, more consistently, they’re less likely to screw something up. So, yeah, as a judge, I just would be trying to, you know, follow the law. But, yeah, it’s, it’s tough, man. I, I’ve, we’ve had, we’ve had the opportunity to maybe buy, you know, property and in Pullman, but I’ve just made a decision. I don’t want to be a landlord. I’d rather not do that for it’s just a lot of work, unless you’re, unless that’s really your job, and you’re, you own a lot of properties, and you’re really, you know, you have, you’re doing it at scale, and you’re efficient at it, but to just dabble in it, I think, is a not something I would be willing to do. So yeah, hopefully that answers your question well.

Jacob Davis

27:11

So yeah, explain that to me. So, in Washington state, so tenants get free legal support. And so, if you’re trying to evict a tenant, but you lose in court, so the tenant doesn’t have to pay for the free legal support. So why would a landlord pay for those legal fees? That makes no sense at all to me, like to me, that seems like that’s just crazy,

Roger Sandberg

27:43

yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s, yeah, you gotta talk to your legislator. Talk to Joe schmick, see what he can help you out with there. But yeah, I mean, that’s just the the law that was passed is to give tenants, you know, they have to believe, they have to qualify financially. But most tenants would, yeah, you get to get an attorney. And if, if the landlord screws something up in the process, the it’s pretty automatic that they would have to, you know, if they, if they just procedurally, do something wrong, they would in the tenant wins, they’re likely to have to pay the attorney fees, even if the tenant got a free attorney, because the attorney still, you know, makes his money somewhere, if he’s represent, you know, if he’s employed by Northwest Justice Project, Northwest Justice Project is paid as his salary, so, yeah, he would submit a cost bill, and you got to pay it. Yeah. I mean, there’s been so like I say, I there have been some interesting cases, you know, not just at the trial court level. I mean, even if you win at the trial court level and the tenant appeals and wins at the appellate court level, you’d have to pay the appellate court of fee, fees and and, so, yeah, I mean, you may have to go back and pay the trial court fees that were incurred there. So, I mean, it’s, it’s real expensive. I my advice as an attorney to landlords has been, or had been, you know, just, just, just do whatever you can to get the attendant out. You know, pay them 500 bucks to if they’re willing to move out. You know, it will save you money in the long run. Just, you know, try to avoid a contested court hearing at all costs. That’s just, you know, just keep working. Yeah, you’re going to lose some money if the tenant is three months behind in rent and they just haven’t paid but you know, that’s part of being a landlord. I guess you’re going to, you’re going to deal with people who get behind on rent. That’s, that’s part of it. So, recovering.

Jarod Evenson

29:59

It’s gonna cost more than trying to fight it.

Roger Sandberg

30:02

It would cost more. Well, yeah, and you just run the risk of, you know, getting something wrong. So, I mean, the court procedures are not so difficult that somebody can’t figure them out, but if you’re going to court once every three years. Then, yeah, there’s, there’s a good chance you could be hit with a $10,000 cost bill.

Jacob Davis

30:30

So good to know. Well, Roger Jared, I think that’s about all I got for today. Somebody’s been blowing up my phone. I gotta deal with deal with somebody. But anything Roger, anything you’d like to say, you know, like, vote for Roger, or something like that. Yeah, vote for Roger.

Roger Sandberg

30:53

Yeah, no. I mean, we got about October 19. I think the auditor will be mailing out election ballots. Appreciate if you check my box and vote for me, got to turn it back in by November 5. So, yeah, I mean, I’m happy. If anybody has any more questions, feel free to reach out. We got, of course, the campaign website, which I’m sure Jacob can put in the description. And, you know, send me, send me an email, give me a call. Yeah, happy to talk to people. I’ll be out there knocking on your door pretty soon, so we’ll see you out in the community, or send me an email. So yeah, thank you. Thank you, guys, for having me.

Jacob Davis

31:33

Thanks, Roger. Yeah, thanks for being on that was awesome.

Jarod Evenson

31:37

He’s got Jacob T Davis’ endorsement.

Jacob Davis

31:40

That’s right. Totally Yeah. Jacob T and Jared, Jared E,

Roger Sandberg

31:47

there we go. All right. All right, thanks guys.

Jacob Davis

31:50

All right. Well, nice guys, yep, say thanks.