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 1975 / Served to 1997

Carl W. Anderson

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Carl W. Anderson was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1975. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1975–1997 · 22 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1975	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1984	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1984	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Anderson authored 205 published opinions for the court (1919–1997), plus 1 dissent and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Finnie v. Town of Tiburon (134 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. 18 of these were attributed to Anderson 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
1988	Finnie v. Town of Tiburon	199 Cal. App. 3d 1	134
1992	Chatton v. National Union Fire Insurance	10 Cal. App. 4th 846	92
1994	McLaughlin v. National Union Fire Insurance	23 Cal. App. 4th 1132	85
1996	Software Design & Application, Ltd. v. Hoefer & Arnett, Inc.	49 Cal. App. 4th 472	83
1992	Helfand v. Nationall Union Fire Insurance	10 Cal. App. 4th 869	81
1993	Fibreboard Corp. v. Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co.	16 Cal. App. 4th 492	79
1989	In Re the Marriage of Broderick	209 Cal. App. 3d 489	75
1989	Trerice v. Blue Cross of California	209 Cal. App. 3d 878	61
1984	People v. Thompson	160 Cal. App. 3d 220	57
1993	In Re Alexander K.	14 Cal. App. 4th 549	51
1997	Klein v. Earth Elements, Inc.	59 Cal. App. 4th 965	45
1995	Ticor Title Insurance v. Employers Insurance of Wausau	40 Cal. App. 4th 1699	45
1997	People v. Ramon T.	57 Cal. App. 4th 201	42
1991	Lucas Valley Homeowners Assn. v. County of Marin	233 Cal. App. 3d 130	40
1991	Old Line Life Insurance of America v. Superior Court	229 Cal. App. 3d 1600	37

Showing the 15 most-cited of 210 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 Carl W. Anderson on?: Carl W. Anderson was a Presiding 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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22 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).