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 2009 / Active

Charles Suren Poochigian

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Charles Suren Poochigian is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2009. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2009 · 16 yrs
Education: California State-Fresno 1972

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2009	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

California State University-Fresno	Business Administration	1972
Santa Clara University		1975

Judicial Record

In our data, Poochigian authored 15 published opinions for the court (2010–2019), plus 2 dissents and 5 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. 21 of these were attributed to Poochigian 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
2010	People v. Wilson	186 Cal. App. 4th 789	118
2011	People v. Brown†	192 Cal. App. 4th 1222	112
2016	Wallace v. County of Stanislaus· Concurrence†	245 Cal. App. 4th 109	64
2011	People v. Lopez†	199 Cal. App. 4th 1297	45
2015	Baker v. Castaldi†	235 Cal. App. 4th 218	42
2015	People v. Bell†	241 Cal. App. 4th 315	35
2013	Burwell v. Burwell†	221 Cal. App. 4th 1	30
2013	The People v. Williams· Concurrence†	218 Cal. App. 4th 1038	23
2016	People v. Arellano†	245 Cal. App. 4th 1139	21
2018	People v. Dynes†	229 Cal. Rptr. 3d 133	19
2019	People v. Superior Court of Kings Cnty.· Dissent†	251 Cal. Rptr. 3d 158	16
2019	People v. Superior Court of Stanislaus Cnty.· Dissent†	250 Cal. Rptr. 3d 661	14
2017	People v. Rodriguez†	224 Cal. Rptr. 3d 295	14
2018	Visalia Retail, LP v. City of Visalia†	228 Cal. Rptr. 3d 351	11

Showing the 15 most-cited of 22 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 Charles Suren Poochigian on?: Charles Suren Poochigian is 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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16 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).