After 26 years as a trial lawyer working for the same San Diego firm, Steven R. Denton accepted an appointment to serve as a judge.

“I took a huge cut in pay to go into public service to be a judge,” the Del Mar resident recalled in a recent interview. “I had a very lucrative (law) practice and partnership and was encouraged to go on the bench, and I did. It’s a form of public service, but I enjoyed being a judge.”

In recognition of Denton’s nearly 50-year career as trial lawyer, Superior Court judge, civil disputes mediator and young attorneys’ mentor,the joint sponsors of the Red Boudreau Trial Lawyers Dinner Consumer Attorneys of San Diego, the San Diego Defense Lawyers Association and American Board of Trial Advocates in October honored him with its Pillar of the Legal Community Award.

Denton received the accolade at the organization’s 40th anniversary of the Red Boudreau Trial Lawyers dinner. Consumer Attorneys of San Diego was formerly called the San Diego Trial Lawyers Association, a name change intended to more accurately reflect the role of attorneys in civil liability litigation.

The dinner, held at the U.S. Grant Hotel in downtown San Diego, is the consumer attorneys group’s yearly celebration of outstanding contributors to the legal profession. Proceeds go to Father Joe’s Villages, a longtime San Diego nonprofit providing shelter and many other services to the homeless.

“I would say it’s a thrill of a lifetime to have an organization like that honor you for a career’s good work,” Denton said of the award. “There were 415 people that put on tuxedoes and beautiful dresses to attend the dinner.

“And all of those people are either lawyers or judges or spouses They broke whatever previous records for fundraising for Father Joe’s Villages.”

The dinner and award’s association with the late trial attorney Red Boudreau provided added significance to Denton, given Boudreau’s prominence in San Diego legal circles. Denton said he remains a good friend of Boudreau’s son, a retired lawyer.

“Red Boudreau was a legendary personal injury lawyer beginning in the early ‘50s in San Diego and was still practicing law when I first stated practicing law,” Denton said. “He was an outstanding individual, sort of a famous local personality and an old-time great trial lawyer. So when they started this dinner event, it was named after him.”

Childhood Odyssey

Denton arrived in the San Diego region in 1972 to attend law school at USD, having graduated with a bachelor’s degree in environmental biology from University of California, Santa Barbara. Yet, before his college days began, Denton had already absorbed a wealth of experiences from having lived at locales around the globe.

The son of a Pan American Airways ground manager, Denton was born in Manila in the Philippines in 1949. Within a few years, he was living in Tokyo.

The family followed his dad to Hawaii, where they lived on the windward side of Oahu. Then his father was transferred to tiny Wake Island, a midway stop for trans-Pacific air travel, since planes were incapable of flying nonstop between the West Coast and Asia.

The island was one of the many targeted by the Japanese during WW II. Denton recalled seeing abandoned military installations and war debris when he lived there.

“It was an interesting place to spend a year and half or two years,” Denton said. “We had a very small school that was made of plywood and didn’t have windows.”

Denton was in for a shock with the family’s next move, as they relocated on the other side of the world to West Berlin at the height of the Cold War.

“In November 1961, the family moved from Wake Island, where I didn’t own a pair of shoes, to Berlin, Germany, where it’s essentially freezing all the time,” he said.

Denton recalled the infamous Berlin Wall was under construction by communist East Germany to stop its population from defecting to the West.

“It was interesting being there during that period of time because when I first got there, there were frequent reports of people being shot or arrested trying to cross the barbed wire, mine fields and tunneling under the buildings and what have you.”

Despite the conflict and chaos heard on Armed Forces Radio or read in the military’s Stars and Stripes newspaper, Denton grew up relatively insulated from that, as his family was surrounded by occupation forces, intelligence agencies, civilian employees and their families.

“They had an American high school in Berlin, just like you would have transplanted it from Kansas and dropped it into Berlin,” he said. “And, of course, the U.S. occupation forces were all over West Germany and they had various high schools all over West Germany. So your American high school teams would play all of the high school sports against teams in West Germany, like in Frankfurt and Karlsruhe.”

Since graduating from high school in Berlin, getting his undergraduate degree at UCSB and earning his law degree at USD, Denton has remained a San Diego-area resident. Yet, he says, his experiences living in such diverse environments had a valuable impact.

“I think No. 1, it socializes you so that you’re comfortable going into new environments and picking up new friends and making new acquaintances,” he said. “It also gives you a lot of awareness that different countries have a lot to offer.

“Many people who have not traveled very much have a distorted view of what the United States is about and how we’re viewed by other countries and the people in those countries. (You learn) how they live and how they have great societies, great cities, great happy people and tremendous life opportunities.”

Lawyered Up

While a first-year law student in San Diego, Denton walked into the offices of Ludecke & Andreos seeking a position as a law clerk. Despite having no experience, he was hired as clerk and office investigator and stayed there for the next 28 years, during which time the firm was renamed Ludecke, Andreos and Denton.

Eventually it became Ludecke, Denton & Bunn, when up-and-coming lawyer Benjamin Bunn joined the firm, which specialized in representing seriously injured construction workers. Along with Denton, Bunn was honored during the October dinner with the 2024 Daniel T. Broderick III Award.

In 1986, Denton served as president of the San Diego Trial Lawyers Association. During his tenure as trial lawyer, he was awarded six Outstanding Trial Lawyer awards.

In 2001, Denton accepted a San Diego Superior Court appointment and was assigned by presiding Judge Wayne Peterson to the Family Law Department, first in downtown San Diego and then in Vista. Later, he supervised many high stakes civil jury trials.

“Every case is a learning experience when you’re a judge because they can be radically different from one to another in terms of their underlying factual circumstances,” Denton said.

The former judge maintains a full family life with wife Cynthia Chihak that centers on their hillside home in Del Mar’s village neighborhood.

They have two older children, two younger ones in high school and two stepchildren also in school, plus four grandchildren. Denton enjoys golfing and has carded two holes-in-one and three eagles despite his contention of being a poor-to-average player.

Still, despite being a retired judge, the law remains ever-present in Denton’s life. He remains active as a mediator of civil disputes; Chihak is a plaintiffs’ medical malpractice attorney; his daughter Laura Fulton is a senior legal council at SDG&E and her husband is an attorney there.

“We like to say that we are ‘lawyered up’ in our family,” Denton said.