How do judges of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia / Joined 1977 / Served to 1988

Darrell V. McGraw Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia

Darrell V. McGraw Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1936 · age 90
Tenure: 1977–1988 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia	–	–

Education

West Virginia University

Judicial Record

In our data, McGraw authored 367 published opinions for the court (1977–1989), plus 61 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: National Mutual Insurance v. McMahon & Sons, Inc. (242 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. 127 of these were attributed to McGraw 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
1987	National Mutual Insurance v. McMahon & Sons, Inc.	356 S.E.2d 488	242
1983	Nelson v. West Virginia Public Employees Insurance Board	300 S.E.2d 86	231
1977	Chapman v. Kane Transfer Co., Inc.	236 S.E.2d 207	212
1978	Mandolidis v. Elkins Industries, Inc.†	161 W. Va. 695	211
1984	Crump v. Beckley Newspapers, Inc.	320 S.E.2d 70	201
1987	Conaway v. Eastern Associated Coal Corp.· Dissent†	358 S.E.2d 423	162
1987	Committee on Legal Ethics of the West Virginia State Bar v. Walker	358 S.E.2d 234	151
1978	John W. Lodge Distributing Co. v. Texaco, Inc.	245 S.E.2d 157	137
1983	State v. Williams	305 S.E.2d 251	134
1988	Sewell v. Gregory	371 S.E.2d 82	124
1983	Pittsburgh Elevator Co. v. West Virginia Board of Regents	310 S.E.2d 675	121
1978	State v. Vance	250 S.E.2d 146	121
1986	Roberts v. Stevens Clinic Hospital, Inc.· Dissent†	345 S.E.2d 791	109
1983	Robertson v. LeMaster	301 S.E.2d 563	108
1986	Sally-Mike Properties v. Yokum· Dissent†	365 S.E.2d 246	105

Showing the 15 most-cited of 445 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 Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Darrell V. McGraw Jr. on?: Darrell V. McGraw Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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11 years on the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).