Bucks Writs - Spring 2019 - 10

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Meet District Judge
Mark D. Douple, Esq.
By Susan E. Dardes

I

T WAS CERTAINLY MY PRIVILEGE AND PLEASURE TO

SIT DOWN for about an hour to speak with Magisterial
District Judge Mark Douple in his Warrington office
last month, and discuss his work, his family, fishing,
and basketball.

The Judge presides over Doylestown Borough,
and the Township of Doylestown, including the
Bucks County Prison.
Judge Douple was born and raised in Lebanon,
Pennsylvania, and went to Mansfield State University
in Pennsylvania for his undergraduate degree. He
was a Dean's List student who majored in Psychology
and minored in Philosophy. Had he not gone to law
school, he said that he would have gone onto pursue
a doctorate in Psychology. But the University of Toledo
School of Law was looking for students from the east
coast, and he fit the bill. It was, he said, the only law
school to which he applied.
Old fashioned networking in Lebanon County helped
him land an internship with the Pennsylvania Turnpike
commission during law school. After that internship,
DJ Douple joined the Bucks County office of the Public
Defender, where he remained as an assistant PD for four
years. He then went on to practice law in Philadelphia
and Bucks Counties, concentrating on personal injury
and criminal defense work. In 2004, he co-founded the
Bucks County Mediation Center. After opening his own
two-person firm in New Britain in the late '90s, the DJ
enjoyed a successful litigation practice and then joined the
court to fill the seat of the retiring DJ Philip J. Daly.

Judge Douple after catching a Walleye fish in Sturgeon Bay,
Wisconsin.
served on the membership and dispute resolution, the lawyer
referral, and the Bench Bar committees. He is a past recipient
of the President's Award and, not surprisingly, he has
volunteered for the rebooted WLD/YLD mentoring program.
His work in the courtroom keeps his daytime schedule full,
be it with traffic court, criminal cases or non-traffic cases
such as disorderly conduct, landlord tenant disputes and
other general litigation throughout the week. The Judge's
staff is cross trained to handle all cases which come before
him. He has a criminal desk, a civil desk and a non-traffic
desk, and each staff member rotates cases on a periodic
basis. As you might imagine, much of the criminal cases
that come before him are DUI cases, and of the summary
offenses, he hears his fair share of traffic citations.

Judge Douple is in his second term, having been reelected
in 2015. District Judges in Pennsylvania serve 6 year terms,
only constrained by a mandatory (75 year) age retirement.
In a couple more years he will be looking at another
reelection campaign.
Due to Pennsylvania statute and potential conflicts of
interest, Judge Douple can no longer mediate in Bucks
County, nor can he practice criminal law here. But he is a
very active member of the Bucks Bar Association, having

When I asked him why he wanted to become a district
judge after several years of private practice, he told me that
he wanted to make an impression with people, especially

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Bucks Writs - Spring 2019

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