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 2000 / Served to 2012

Betty L. Dawson

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Betty L. Dawson was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 2000. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1948 · age 78
Tenure: 2000–2012 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2003	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2003	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2003	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Dawson authored 76 published opinions for the court (1984–2012), plus 1 dissent and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Brendan O. v. Merced County Human Services Agency (161 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. 20 of these were attributed to Dawson 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	Brendan O. v. Merced County Human Services Agency· Concurrence†	197 Cal. App. 4th 586	161
2004	SFPP, L.P. v. Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway	17 Cal. Rptr. 3d 96	117
2004	Armstrong Petroleum Corp. v. Tri-Valley Oil & Gas Co.	11 Cal. Rptr. 3d 412	92
2008	Central Valley General Hospital v. Smith	75 Cal. Rptr. 3d 771	90
2010	Smith v. Adventist Health System/West	182 Cal. App. 4th 729	76
2005	Coburn v. Sievert	35 Cal. Rptr. 3d 596	73
2004	In Re Ethan N.	18 Cal. Rptr. 3d 504	73
2012	Consolidated Irrigation District v. City of Selma†	204 Cal. App. 4th 187	67
2006	Mendoza v. Rast Produce Co., Inc.	45 Cal. Rptr. 3d 525	65
2004	Haney v. Aramark Uniform Services, Inc.	17 Cal. Rptr. 3d 336	64
2010	Smith v. Selma Community Hospital	188 Cal. App. 4th 1	63
2011	Robinson v. City of Chowchilla†	202 Cal. App. 4th 382	53
2011	Madera Oversight Coalition, Inc. v. County of Madera†	199 Cal. App. 4th 48	53
2009	People v. Moberly	176 Cal. App. 4th 1191	52
2005	County Sanitation District No. 2 v. County of Kern	27 Cal. Rptr. 3d 28	52

Showing the 15 most-cited of 79 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 L. Dawson on?: Betty L. Dawson 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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12 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).