Peter Singer was hired following a vote of San Diego Superior Court judges and serves as a Commissioner of the San Diego Superior Court. He presides over a high-volume courtroom at the Kearny Mesa branch where he handles criminal infractions and small claims cases. Commissioner Singer has also covered the unlawful detainer division of the Court and serves on several of the Court’s committees. By appointment of the Chief Justice of California, Singer serves on the Judicial Council’s Traffic Advisory Committee.
Since becoming a court commissioner in 2015, Singer has been honored as California’s Court Commissioner of the Year and he currently holds the position of president of the California Court Commissioners Association. Before coming to the bench full-time, Commissioner Singer operated his own solo law firm for 28 years, where his practice involved primarily civil law cases, including personal injury, real estate litigation, commercial collections, mental health and probate. During that period, he served the Superior Court (and the former Municipal Court) as a temporary judge for 22 years, as well as providing service as an arbitrator on the business and personal injury panels. Throughout his career as an attorney, Singer was always engaged in issues involving the housing insecure and mentally ill, initially focusing on LPS conservatorships and developmental disability matters and later, representing prison inmates in involuntary medication cases.
Commissioner Singer was recruited by the California Judicial Education and Research (CJER) division of the Judicial Council to serve as an instructor for new judges and commissioners. He presently teaches New Judge Orientation, Primary Assignment training and he is also a faculty member and seminar group leader at the B.E. Witkin Judicial College, having most recently served for two weeks in June 2022.
In September 2022, Commissioner Singer will be presenting the Commissioner of the Year award to a deserving California Court Commissioner at the annual meeting of the California Judges Association.
Singer is extensively engaged in community service, having started as a volunteer firefighter many years ago. He is a 33-year member of the Downtown San Diego Lions Club, where, in the Club’s 100-year history, Singer is the only person to have twice served as president. Additionally, he has twice served as the volunteer CEO of the charitable Lions Welfare Foundation, which has awarded millions of dollars in grants, and at the end of June, he completed a multi-year term as the volunteer CEO of the Lions Community Service Corporation (LCSC), a 501(c)(3) which owns and operates a 131-unit low-income senior community at 310 Market Street in San Diego. Because of the extreme need for affordable housing in the region, Singer has recently spearheaded the refinancing of the existing project for the purpose of unencumbering $34MM+ in order to replicate LCSC’s outstanding housing endeavors. As if that were not enough, Commissioner Singer has served the San Diego community as a volunteer emergency services worker, provided free legal services to fire victims, a volunteer for Stand Down (for homeless veterans) and as Troop Cookie Manager for multiple years in his daughters’ Girl Scout troops.
Peter Singer is a longtime resident of Scripps Ranch, where he and his wife, BeLinda, have raised their two (now adult) daughters.
