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 2010 / Active

Donald R. Franson Jr.

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Donald R. Franson Jr. is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2010. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Fresno. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1952 · age 74
Tenure: Since 2010 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2005	Superior Court of California, County of Fresno	–	–
2010	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of California-Berkeley	American History	1974
UC Law San Francisco		1978

Judicial Record

In our data, Franson authored 350 published opinions for the court (1971–2019), plus 1 dissent and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Uccello v. Laudenslayer (147 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. 71 of these were attributed to Franson 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
1975	Uccello v. Laudenslayer	44 Cal. App. 3d 504	147
1991	In Re Kahlen W.	233 Cal. App. 3d 1414	138
2018	Gutierrez v. Carmax Auto Superstores Cal.†	228 Cal. Rptr. 3d 699	107
1990	Merced County Department of Social Services v. Christopher W.	222 Cal. App. 3d 234	99
1979	In Re Jeannette v. Margery	94 Cal. App. 3d 52	93
1980	Stoiber v. Honeychuck	101 Cal. App. 3d 903	91
2013	Scheenstra v. California Dairies, Inc.†	213 Cal. App. 4th 370	88
1974	People v. County of Kern	39 Cal. App. 3d 830	82
2013	Poet v. State Air Resources Board†	218 Cal. App. 4th 681	81
2018	Morton v. Morton (In re Morton)†	238 Cal. Rptr. 3d 407	80
1988	BP Alaska Exploration, Inc. v. Superior Court	199 Cal. App. 3d 1240	79
1978	People v. Martinez	82 Cal. App. 3d 1	78
1974	Younger v. Solomon	38 Cal. App. 3d 289	78
1982	Kennemur v. State of California	133 Cal. App. 3d 907	75
1977	Fresno Economy Import Used Cars, Inc. v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co.	76 Cal. App. 3d 272	73

Showing the 15 most-cited of 353 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 is Donald R. Franson Jr. on?: Donald R. Franson Jr. is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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15 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).