How do judges of the Michigan Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Court of Appeals / Joined 1986 / Active

David Sawyer

Judge, Michigan Court of Appeals

David Sawyer is a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, serving since 1986. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1986 · 40 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1986	Michigan Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Sawyer authored 254 published opinions for the court (1987–2019), plus 31 dissents and 26 concurrences. Most cited: Novotney v. Burger King Corp. (143 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. 287 of these were attributed to Sawyer 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
1993	Novotney v. Burger King Corp.†	499 N.W.2d 379	143
2005	Health Call of Detroit v. Atrium Home & Health Care Services, Inc· Concurrence†	706 N.W.2d 843	139
2003	Gates v. Gates· Concurrence†	664 N.W.2d 231	135
2005	People v. Johnigan†	696 N.W.2d 724	84
2015	People v. Al-Shara· Dissent†	311 Mich. App. 560	72
1996	People v. Sardy†	216 Mich. App. 111	65
2000	Persichini v. William Beaumont Hospital· Concurrence†	607 N.W.2d 100	55
1996	Shanafelt v. Allstate Insurance	552 N.W.2d 671	50
1987	Morganroth v. Whitall†	411 N.W.2d 859	50
2005	People v. Williams†	692 N.W.2d 722	48
2015	People v. Masroor· Concurrence†	313 Mich. App. 358	46
2003	Papas v. Gaming Control Board· Dissent†	669 N.W.2d 326	42
1989	People v. Rushlow†	445 N.W.2d 222	42
1990	National Sand, Inc v. Nagel Construction, Inc†	451 N.W.2d 618	41
2007	Richardson v. Rockwood Center, LLC†	737 N.W.2d 801	38

Showing the 15 most-cited of 311 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 Michigan Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court is David Sawyer on?: David Sawyer is a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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