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 2005 / Active

Bradford L. Thomas

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Bradford L. Thomas is a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, serving since 2005. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1954 · age 72
Tenure: Since 2005 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2005	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

Florida State University
University of Florida

Judicial Record

In our data, Thomas authored 280 published opinions for the court (2005–2019), plus 40 dissents and 34 concurrences. Most cited: Sylvia Higgins and Collier Higgins v. Dyck O'Neal, Inc. (44 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. 231 of these were attributed to Thomas 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
2016	Sylvia Higgins and Collier Higgins v. Dyck O'Neal, Inc.†	201 So. 3d 157	44
2006	McCray v. State	919 So. 2d 647	43
2011	Jones v. State· Concurrence†	71 So. 3d 173	28
2014	JAMES S. WINDER, Former Husband v. Dian A. Winder, Former Wife†	152 So. 3d 836	26
2017	Thomas Brookie v. Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc. and The Lewis Bear Company†	213 So. 3d 1129	24
2014	Walker v. Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc.†	160 So. 3d 909	24
2013	Westphal v. City of St. Petersburg/City of St. Petersburg Risk Management· Concurrence†	122 So. 3d 440	19
2011	Farrell v. State†	62 So. 3d 20	19
2014	R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. Hiott†	129 So. 3d 473	18
2008	Lukacs v. Luton	982 So. 2d 1217	18
2011	PENSACOLA BEACH PIER, INC. v. King	66 So. 3d 321	17
2007	Jones v. Warmack	967 So. 2d 400	17
2014	Kelly v. State†	137 So. 3d 2	16
2016	Linda G. Morgan v. The Bank of New York Mellon etc.†	200 So. 3d 792	15
2012	Williams v. State†	90 So. 3d 931	15

Showing the 15 most-cited of 358 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 is Bradford L. Thomas on?: Bradford L. Thomas is a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal.

Sources

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

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21 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).