Seattle judge files formal complaint against City Attorney Davison

A Seattle Municipal Court judge, Pooja Vaddadi, has filed a bar complaint against Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison, as well as her former criminal division head, Natalie Walton-Anderson, over their monthslong campaign to exclude Vaddadi from the court’s misdemeanor criminal cases.

Vaddadi accused Davison and Walton-Anderson of defaming her with false accusations of impropriety, incorrectly interpreting her bench decisions and burdening the city’s court system — all in retaliation, Vaddadi said, for a decision she made to exclude one of their attorneys from a case.

“This behavior reflects profound disrespect for this Court; for the judges, magistrates and staff who are burdened; for the City of Seattle that has for nearly a year bled budget for extra pro-tem coverage; or for the victims who may be impacted when court calendars are needlessly overburdened, and cases dismissed for speedy trial violations,” Vaddadi wrote in her complaint to the Washington Bar Association.

The bar association’s discipline can range from a simple admonition up to disbarment.

A spokesperson for the city attorney’s office said Davison and Walton-Anderson “strongly disagree” with Vaddadi’s complaint.

“City Attorney Davison and Ms. Natalie Walton-Anderson will fully cooperate with any requests for information that the Bar may have,” the spokesperson said. “City Attorney Davison’s primary goal is to protect public safety through the work of her office, and that has been her guiding principle in all matters.”

At issue is an internal policy in the Seattle city attorney’s office, in place for most of 2024, to exclude Vaddadi from all criminal cases. Under state law, both defense and prosecuting attorneys are allowed to file one “affidavit of prejudice” per case to change judges without question. While use of the tool is common in one-off cases, it’s rare — if not unprecedented — for an office to instruct front-line attorneys to uniformly direct their affidavits at a single judge.

That was the case with Vaddadi, made explicit by the city attorney’s office in internal memos and news releases to the public.

Davison and her staff contended Vaddadi was acting out of step with her colleagues on the bench, improperly overruling and failing to find proper cause, coming to outlier decisions in domestic violence and DUI cases and making errors in evidentiary hearings.

“The resounding input from attorneys that have appeared in her courtroom is that her decisions demonstrate a complete lack of understanding, or perhaps even intentional disregard, of the evidence rules, even on basic issues,” Walton-Anderson wrote at the time.

As a result of the policy, Vaddadi was exiled to processing low-level civil matters while her caseload was shifted to other municipal court judges. The court was forced to hire temporary judges — at additional cost — to help carry the load.

In her complaint, Vaddadi said the city attorney’s office reasoning was not only false, but an intentionally defamatory political stunt. The office was slow to provide any examples of improper rulings, Vaddadi said, and when it did, its analysis contained factual errors and lacked context.

Moreover, Vaddadi said Davison and her staff had made no meaningful effort to speak with her about their concerns and did little to appeal Vaddadi’s decisions through the proper court channels.

In fact, Vaddadi contends the real motivation for the affidavit policy was retaliation for a decision she made to disqualify a prosecuting attorney “to mitigate an ethical and evidentiary breach.”

The actions by the city attorney’s office, Vaddadi wrote, “are not tied to any perception of bias, but rather to the improper purpose of retaliating against me for embarrassing an employee of (the Seattle city attorney’s office).”

Vaddadi won her seat on the court in 2022, when she defeated incumbent Judge Adam Eisenberg. Her victory fit into a broader wave around the country of former defense attorneys running on reform platforms for judge and prosecuting positions.

Vaddadi’s election stood in contrast to Davison’s, who won her office the year before on a campaign of stricter enforcement of the city’s misdemeanor and gross misdemeanor laws.

Davison is up for reelection in November.

Nevertheless, Vaddadi contends, “I did not intend to stand out as any kind of firebrand, and my brand of reform to (Seattle Municipal Court) was a return to the basics of decorum and impartiality.”

The ACLU of Washington sued the city attorney’s office over its policy to exclude Vaddadi last year. The case was dismissed by King County Superior Court Judge Brian McDonald, who said lawyers have the legal right to file affidavits of prejudice.

“This isn’t a decision on the merits of what this city attorney was doing with respect to this judge,” he said, according to KUOW.

The city attorney’s office rescinded it blanket exclusion policy earlier this year, though Vaddadi’s caseload is still limited.

Walton-Anderson has since left the city attorney’s office and now works for Mayor Bruce Harrell overseeing public safety policies.

In 2019, lawyers with the King County Department of Public Defense filed a flurry of affidavits against then-Judge Ed McKenna, whom they viewed as imposing overly strict sentences. However, department leadership denied there was any top-down policy to do so.

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