Hon. Carol Overton (Ret.)

Hon. Carol Overton (Ret.) has resolved civil disputes in nearly every category California courts hear, from family law and probate to employment, personal injury, commercial, real estate, and elder abuse matters. A dedicated settlement assignment on the Santa Clara County Superior Court made resolution the sustained focus of her judicial career, sharpening an instinct for what actually moves a case. Evaluative and pragmatic, Judge Overton gives parties a clear read on their position and a realistic path forward. She knows what a case is worth, what a party will accept, and how much distance separates the two, and she has spent a career closing that gap.

Judge Overton tells parties the truth about their case. She will name where a position is exposed, what a jury is likely to make of it, and what the road ahead looks like if the case does not resolve. She offers that read in service of the parties, without theater or leverage. It is information, not a ruling. She works alongside counsel rather than between them, trusting that the people who built the case are best positioned to find the way out of it. She is deeply attentive and notices when a party has more to say than the process has invited, making room for it before asking them to move. Underneath all of it is a conviction Judge Overton has never lost: every case deserves a meaningful effort to resolve it.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Judge Overton to the Santa Clara County Superior Court in 2005. She presided over misdemeanor and drug court calendars before serving as supervising judge of the Domestic Violence Department, then moved to the Civil Trials Department, where she remained for the balance of her time on the bench. Beginning in 2020, she took on a formally designated settlement and ADR assignment covering judicial ADR, mandatory and voluntary settlement conferences, and informal discovery conferences, later expanded to include unlawful detainer, civil harassment, and elder abuse matters. That assignment made settlement her daily work. Presiding over trials taught her what a case is worth in front of a jury. Resolving them, case after case, taught her what it costs to find out.

Judge Overton began her career as a Deputy Public Defender with the Office of the Public Defender of Santa Clara County, trying cases from the first days of her practice. She spent the next 18 years in the Office of the City Attorney of San Jose, rising from Deputy City Attorney to Senior Deputy City Attorney, where she litigated public nuisance abatement, unfair business practices, and civil rights matters and contributed to the city’s civil abatement strategy during a period when that approach was still being tested in California courts. By the time she reached the bench, she had spent two decades inside disputes as they unfolded, and that experience is what gives her assessments their authority.

At Signature Resolution, Judge Overton continues the work that defined much of her judicial career. She takes on difficult cases with a belief in the advantages of mediation, tells parties plainly what she sees, and keeps working until the people in the room reach terms they can accept.