How do judges of the Court of Appeals of Georgia reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Court of Appeals of Georgia / Joined 1940 / Served to 1960

Bernard Clay Gardner Sr.

Judge, Court of Appeals of Georgia

Bernard Clay Gardner Sr. was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Georgia, who joined the court in 1940. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1882–1962
Tenure: 1940–1960 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1940	Court of Appeals of Georgia	–	–

Education

University of Georgia

Judicial Record

In our data, Gardner authored 1,721 published opinions for the court (1940–1960), plus 31 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: Porter v. Lassiter (108 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. 593 of these were attributed to Gardner 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
1955	Porter v. Lassiter	87 S.E.2d 100	108
1955	Steve M. Solomon, Jr., Inc. v. Edgar	88 S.E.2d 167	102
1941	Brown v. Ragsdale Motor Co.· Dissent	16 S.E.2d 176	81
1941	Whatley v. Henry	16 S.E.2d 214	77
1947	Smith v. State	41 S.E.2d 541	53
1948	Smith v. American Oil Company	49 S.E.2d 90	51
1947	Auld v. Colonial Stores Inc.· Dissent	45 S.E.2d 827	45
1957	Martin v. Henson	99 S.E.2d 251	43
1958	Atlanta Joint Terminals v. Knight· Concurrence†	106 S.E.2d 417	40
1950	Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Ouzts	60 S.E.2d 70	40
1944	Mills v. State	30 S.E.2d 824	40
1940	Western & Atlantic Railroad v. Mathis	10 S.E.2d 457	35
1944	Southern Grocery Stores Inc. v. Keys	28 S.E.2d 581	32
1959	Garland v. State of Georgia· Dissent†	110 S.E.2d 143	31
1948	Roper v. Scott	48 S.E.2d 118	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,773 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 Court of Appeals of Georgia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Bernard Clay Gardner Sr. on?: Bernard Clay Gardner Sr. was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Georgia.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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