A précis of Tom Nadeau

Some of the news contacts I’ve recently made are complete strangers. They don’t know anything about me, or Notable Trials.

It is not as it once was when I could simply jabber into the phone, “This is Tom Nadeau with the Bee (or for Reuters, or with the Daily Recorder, etc.)” and have a light bulb of recognition blink on over the head of the party at the other end of the line.

So it seems timely for me to provide a brief – and incomplete – thumbnail c.v. of who I am and some things I’ve done.

Otherwise, I might be taken for a fool.

So:

In his long career as a journalist Tom Nadeau has covered county trial courts, state appeals courts, the state supreme court and federal district courts for daily newspapers in Northern California, including San Francisco, Sacramento and points north.

He has reported for the Daily Journal Corporation legal newspapers, including the Daily Recorder, Sacramento, the San Francisco Daily Journal and the Los Angeles Daily Journal.

Over the years, he has covered the Superior Court beat for newspapers of record in Yuba, Sutter, Nevada, Butte, Humboldt and Sacramento counties.

Significant federal trials Nadeau covered gavel-to-gavel have included the Ted Kaczinski “Unabomber” proceedings in US District Court, Sacramento, which he did for the Daily Recorder, Newsweek magazine and Reuters news service.

Controversial Superior Court trials he has covered include People v. Morgunov (Sutter), People v. Hoke Jones (Yuba) and People v. Sam Strange and People v. Pacific Gas & Electric” (Nevada). All these trials were done either for The Daily Recorder or the Sacramento Bee.

The State Bar of California awarded Nadeau its Gold Medallion for Excellence in Investigative Journalism for his reportage during the two Morgunov trials.

His book, "Showdown at the Bouzy Rouge: People v. PG&E", published by Comstock Bonanza Press, Grass Valley, Calif., is still available through Comstock Bonanza and Amazon.

Nadeau has covered many other less publicized civil and criminal trials that were, in fact, of legal and historical consequence.

Notable Trials provides close coverage of unusual trials that in their own unique ways reveal the finer points and worst faults in state and federal court operations and the men and women who judge, clerk and lawyer in them.

It also shines a fresh light on the administrators, prosecutors, plaintiffs, defenders, defendants and other parties of interest who put on the show.

Tom Nadeau

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