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 1980 / Served to 1989

Daniel S. Pearson

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Daniel S. Pearson was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1930–2003
Tenure: 1980–1989 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

Amherst College
Yale University

Judicial Record

In our data, Pearson authored 134 published opinions for the court (1981–1988), plus 10 dissents and 30 concurrences. Most cited: Husky Industries, Inc. v. Black (49 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. 153 of these were attributed to Pearson 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
1983	Husky Industries, Inc. v. Black	434 So. 2d 988	49
1982	Bystrom v. Equitable Life Assurance Society of United States· Concurrence†	416 So. 2d 1133	31
1987	Jones v. State	510 So. 2d 1147	21
1983	A.E.K. v. State†	432 So. 2d 720	15
1981	Cheek v. McGowan Elec. Supply Co.	404 So. 2d 834	15
1987	New Washington Heights Community Development Conference v. Department of Community Affairs†	515 So. 2d 328	12
1987	Gargone v. State· Concurrence†	503 So. 2d 421	12
1984	Whitehead v. State	450 So. 2d 545	12
1987	Metropolitan Dade County v. P.L. Dodge Foundations, Inc.†	509 So. 2d 1170	11
1985	Pitts v. State	473 So. 2d 1370	11
1981	Gaines v. State	406 So. 2d 523	11
1981	R. A. v. State· Concurrence†	400 So. 2d 1059	10
1988	S.G. v. State†	518 So. 2d 964	9
1985	Dykema v. Godfrey	467 So. 2d 824	9
1986	McIver v. Tallahassee Democrat, Inc.	489 So. 2d 793	8

Showing the 15 most-cited of 174 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 was Daniel S. Pearson on?: Daniel S. Pearson was a Judge of the Florida District Courts 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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9 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).