How do judges of the New York Appellate Division reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Appellate Division / Joined 1982 / Served to 1993

Bentley Kassal

Justice, New York Appellate Division

Bentley Kassal was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division, who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1917 · age 109
Tenure: 1982–1993 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	New York Appellate Division	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Kassal authored 90 published opinions for the court (1983–1993), plus 45 dissents and 20 concurrences. Most cited: Thoreson v. Penthouse International, Ltd. (288 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. 155 of these were attributed to Kassal 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
1992	Thoreson v. Penthouse International, Ltd.· Concurrence†	179 A.D.2d 29	288
1984	Lewis v. Metropolitan Transportation Authority†	99 A.D.2d 246	115
1983	Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co. v. Michigan Mutual Insurance†	93 A.D.2d 337	64
1984	Jenkins v. Burgos†	99 A.D.2d 217	50
1984	American Motorists Insurance v. Salvatore†	102 A.D.2d 342	43
1984	Fender v. Prescott†	101 A.D.2d 418	40
1983	M.I.F. Securities Co. v. R. C. Stamm & Co.· Dissent†	94 A.D.2d 211	37
1986	Coursen v. New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center†	114 A.D.2d 254	35
1983	Maglich v. Saxe, Bacon & Bolan, P. C.†	97 A.D.2d 19	35
1990	In re Zariyasta S.†	158 A.D.2d 45	33
1986	Taylor v. Blair†	116 A.D.2d 204	33
1983	Jolis v. Jolis· Dissent†	98 A.D.2d 692	32
1983	Saftler v. Government Employees Insurance†	95 A.D.2d 54	32
1984	Samovar of Russia Jewelry Antique Corp. v. Generali†	102 A.D.2d 279	30
1984	Wilson v. Wilson· Concurrence†	101 A.D.2d 536	30

Showing the 15 most-cited of 155 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 New York Appellate Division reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Bentley Kassal on?: Bentley Kassal was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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11 years on the New York Appellate Division. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).