How do judges of the New York Appellate Division reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Appellate Division / Joined 1933 / Served to 1952

Christopher J. Heffernan

Justice, New York Appellate Division

Christopher J. Heffernan was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division, who joined the court in 1933. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1882–1959
Tenure: 1933–1952 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1933	New York Appellate Division	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Heffernan authored 229 published opinions for the court (1933–1952), plus 79 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Sparkill Realty Corp. v. State (55 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. 315 of these were attributed to Heffernan 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
1938	Sparkill Realty Corp. v. State†	254 A.D. 78	55
1935	Ingersoll v. Onondaga Hockey Club, Inc.†	245 A.D. 137	52
1945	Claim of Schmidt v. Wolf Contracting Co.†	269 A.D. 201	50
1934	People ex rel. Rice v. Graves†	242 A.D. 128	42
1939	Collins v. City of Schenectady†	256 A.D. 389	41
1939	Litkind v. Ward†	256 A.D. 74	40
1941	Purdy v. McGarity†	262 A.D. 623	39
1945	Douglas v. State†	269 A.D. 521	35
1943	Weihs v. State†	267 A.D. 233	33
1937	DeCoigne v. Ludlum Steel Co.†	251 A.D. 662	33
1934	People ex rel. Reibman v. Warden of the County Jail†	242 A.D. 282	32
1940	Conroy v. Saratoga Springs Authority†	259 A.D. 365	29
1938	In re Schenectady Trust Co.†	254 A.D. 448	29
1937	Belfanc v. Belfanc· Dissent†	252 A.D. 453	29
1949	Lavin v. Goldberg Building Material Corp.†	274 A.D. 690	28

Showing the 15 most-cited of 315 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 New York Appellate Division reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Christopher J. Heffernan on?: Christopher J. Heffernan was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division.

Sources

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

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19 years on the New York Appellate Division. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).