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 1977 / Served to 1990

Betty Barry-Deal

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Betty Barry-Deal was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1977–1990 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1980	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Barry-Deal authored 101 published opinions for the court (1980–1990), plus 1 dissent and 3 concurrences. Most cited: CNA Casualty of California v. Seaboard Surety Co. (199 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. 105 of these were attributed to Barry-Deal 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
1986	CNA Casualty of California v. Seaboard Surety Co.†	176 Cal. App. 3d 598	199
1990	In Re the Marriage of Ostler & Smith†	223 Cal. App. 3d 33	98
1983	Barbara A. v. John G.†	145 Cal. App. 3d 369	93
1982	In Re Marriage of Marsden†	130 Cal. App. 3d 426	88
1984	People v. Taylor†	162 Cal. App. 3d 720	68
1990	Howell v. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co.· Concurrence†	218 Cal. App. 3d 1446	63
1990	People v. Tobin†	219 Cal. App. 3d 634	57
1983	People v. Triplett†	144 Cal. App. 3d 283	44
1982	City of Carmel-By-The-Sea v. Board of Supervisors†	137 Cal. App. 3d 964	41
1989	Duffy v. Cavalier†	215 Cal. App. 3d 1517	38
1989	In Re the Marriage of Baltins†	212 Cal. App. 3d 66	38
1983	Diaz v. Oakland Tribune, Inc.†	139 Cal. App. 3d 118	37
1982	Rosack v. Volvo of America Corp.†	131 Cal. App. 3d 741	35
1981	In Re Marriage of Leonard†	122 Cal. App. 3d 443	35
1984	Parsons Manufacturing Corp. v. Superior Court†	156 Cal. App. 3d 1151	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 105 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 Betty Barry-Deal on?: Betty Barry-Deal 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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13 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).