How do judges of the Montana Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1989 / Served to 1990

Diane G. Barz

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Diane G. Barz was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1989. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1943 · age 83
Tenure: 1989–1990 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Barz authored 63 published opinions for the court (1985–1991), plus 8 dissents. Most cited: Graber v. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. (42 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. 28 of these were attributed to Barz 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
1990	Graber v. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co.	797 P.2d 214	42
1990	Daniels v. Thomas, Dean & Hoskins, Inc.	804 P.2d 359	39
1990	Simmons Oil Corp. v. Holly Corp.· Dissent†	796 P.2d 189	35
1990	Dean v. Fred's Towing	801 P.2d 579	34
1990	Weaver Ex Rel. Weaver-Maxwell, Inc. v. Law Firm of Graybill, Ostrem, Warner & Crotty	803 P.2d 1089	30
1991	Edsall Const. Co., Inc. v. Robinson	804 P.2d 1039	27
1991	State v. Evans	806 P.2d 512	25
1991	State v. Sor-Lokken	805 P.2d 1367	24
1990	O'BAGY v. First Interstate Bank	785 P.2d 190	24
1990	State v. Senn	795 P.2d 973	23
1990	VanLuchene v. State	797 P.2d 932	20
1990	State v. Ramstead	793 P.2d 802	18
1990	State v. Baldwin	789 P.2d 1215	18
1989	Benson v. Pyfer	783 P.2d 923	18
1989	State Medical Oxygen & Supply, Inc. v. American Medical Oxygen Co.	782 P.2d 1272	18

Showing the 15 most-cited of 71 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 Montana Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Diane G. Barz on?: Diane G. Barz was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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1 year on the Montana Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).