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 2014 / Active

Brian Matthew Hoffstadt

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Brian Matthew Hoffstadt is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2014. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2014 · 11 yrs
Education: California State Polytechnic-Pomona 1992

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2010	Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles	–	–
2014	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

California State Polytechnic University-Pomona	Business Administration	1992
University of California-Los Angeles	graduated first in class	1995

Judicial Record

In our data, Hoffstadt authored 51 published opinions for the court (2014–2019). Most cited: Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Jessica G. (95 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. 51 of these were attributed to Hoffstadt 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
2015	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Jessica G.†	242 Cal. App. 4th 634	95
2014	People v. Kirvin†	231 Cal. App. 4th 1507	81
2018	People v. Hurlic†	235 Cal. Rptr. 3d 255	61
2017	People v. Washington†	222 Cal. Rptr. 3d 772	53
2019	People v. Orozco†	244 Cal. Rptr. 3d 337	52
2019	Smyth v. Berman†	242 Cal. Rptr. 3d 336	52
2017	Mission Beverage Co. v. Pabst Brewing Co.†	223 Cal. Rptr. 3d 547	52
2018	Douglass v. Serenivision, Inc.†	229 Cal. Rptr. 3d 54	45
2017	Schep v. Capital One, N.A.†	220 Cal. Rptr. 3d 408	41
2016	Martin Potts & Associates, Inc. v. Corsair, LLC†	244 Cal. App. 4th 432	39
2016	Licudine v. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center†	3 Cal. App. 5th 881	38
2016	People v. Williams†	199 Cal. Rptr. 3d 755	32
2016	Santa Clarita Organization for Planning & the Environment v. Castaic Lake Water Agency†	1 Cal. App. 5th 1084	31
2018	La Mirada Ave. Neighborhood Ass'n of Hollywood v. City of L. A.†	232 Cal. Rptr. 3d 338	28
2017	People v. Financial Casualty & Surety, Inc.†	10 Cal. App. 5th 369	28

Showing the 15 most-cited of 51 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 is Brian Matthew Hoffstadt on?: Brian Matthew Hoffstadt is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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11 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).