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 2012 / Served to 2021

David A. Thompson

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

David A. Thompson was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 2012. They previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Orange. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2012–2021 · 9 yrs
Education: Georgetown 1980

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1998	Superior Court of California, County of Orange	–	–
2012	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Georgetown University	Business Administration (Finance), summa cum laude	1980
University of California-Los Angeles		1983

Judicial Record

In our data, Thompson authored 22 published opinions for the court (2013–2019), plus 6 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Lueras v. BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP (231 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. 29 of these were attributed to Thompson 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
2013	Lueras v. BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP· Concurrence†	221 Cal. App. 4th 49	231
2017	McDermott Will & Emery LLP v. Superior Court of Orange County· Dissent†	10 Cal. App. 5th 1083	90
2017	People v. Sledge†	7 Cal. App. 5th 1089	66
2016	People v. Ramirez & Villarreal†	244 Cal. App. 4th 800	50
2017	Curci Invs., LLC v. Baldwin†	221 Cal. Rptr. 3d 847	48
2016	Shimkus v. Shimkus†	244 Cal. App. 4th 1262	39
2018	People v. Cisneros-Ramirez†	240 Cal. Rptr. 3d 204	26
2016	Ammerman v. Callender†	245 Cal. App. 4th 1058	18
2013	People v. Jessee†	222 Cal. App. 4th 501	17
2019	People v. Flores†	251 Cal. Rptr. 3d 236	16
2017	Zubillaga v. Allstate Indem. Co.†	219 Cal. Rptr. 3d 620	16
2015	People v. Delacerda†	236 Cal. App. 4th 282	16
2019	Ctr. for Bio-Ethical Reform, Inc. v. Irvine Co.†	249 Cal. Rptr. 3d 391	15
2019	Mercury Ins. Co. v. Lara†	246 Cal. Rptr. 3d 907	13
2018	Weiler v. Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Inv. Servs., Inc.†	232 Cal. Rptr. 3d 155	11

Showing the 15 most-cited of 29 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 David A. Thompson on?: David A. Thompson was 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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9 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).