How do judges of the California Court of Appeal reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

California Court of Appeal / Joined 1995 / Served to 2016

Alex C. McDonald

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Alex C. McDonald was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1995. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1936 · age 90
Tenure: 1995–2016 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1995	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, McDonald authored 223 published opinions for the court (1995–2016), plus 7 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Cahill v. San Diego Gas & Electric Co. (591 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 69 of these were attributed to McDonald by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
2011	Cahill v. San Diego Gas & Electric Co.†	194 Cal. App. 4th 939	591
1999	San Diego County Health & Human Services Agency v. Gala G.†	77 Cal. App. 4th 799	308
2005	In Re Savannah M.	32 Cal. Rptr. 3d 526	300
2009	People v. Millard	175 Cal. App. 4th 7	253
2003	Martinez v. Metabolife International., Inc.	6 Cal. Rptr. 3d 494	229
2009	In Re James R.	176 Cal. App. 4th 129	213
2009	Troyk v. Farmers Group, Inc.	171 Cal. App. 4th 1305	197
2012	People v. Ortiz†	208 Cal. App. 4th 1354	155
2005	ASP Properties Group, L.P. v. Fard, Inc.	35 Cal. Rptr. 3d 343	148
2003	Jennings v. Palomar Pomerado Health Systems, Inc.	8 Cal. Rptr. 3d 363	144
2012	People v. McKee†	207 Cal. App. 4th 1325	141
2007	Loggins v. Kaiser Permanente International	60 Cal. Rptr. 3d 45	132
2008	Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. v. Dintino	167 Cal. App. 4th 333	125
2009	Hylton v. Frank E. Rogozienski, Inc.	177 Cal. App. 4th 1264	122
2002	San Diego County Health & Human Services Agency v. L. L.†	101 Cal. App. 4th 942	114

Showing the 15 most-cited of 236 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the California Court of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Alex C. McDonald on?: Alex C. McDonald was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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21 years on the California Court of Appeal. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).