How do judges of the Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?

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

Florida District Courts of Appeal / Joined 1955 / Served to 1970

Benjamin C. Thornal

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Benjamin C. Thornal was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 1955. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1908–1970
Tenure: 1955–1970 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1955	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of Florida

Judicial Record

In our data, Thornal authored 6 published opinions for the court (1958–1959). Most cited: Board of Com'rs of State Inst. v. TALLAHASSEE B. & T. CO. (47 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. 2 of these were attributed to Thornal 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
1958	Board of Com'rs of State Inst. v. TALLAHASSEE B. & T. CO.	108 So. 2d 74	47
1959	Commercial Credit Corporation v. Varn	108 So. 2d 638	42
1959	Green v. Galvin†	114 So. 2d 187	28
1959	Broward County v. Bouldin	114 So. 2d 737	14
1959	Furr v. Gulf Exhibition Corp.†	114 So. 2d 27	10
1959	Giglio v. Valdez	114 So. 2d 305	9

Showing the 6 most-cited of 6 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 Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Benjamin C. Thornal on?: Benjamin C. Thornal was a Judge of the Florida District Courts 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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15 years on the Florida District Courts of Appeal. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).