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 1982 / Served to 1995

Donald N. Gates

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Donald N. Gates was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1982–1995 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Gates authored 111 published opinions for the court (1930–1995), plus 4 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. v. Bank of America NT&SA (59 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. 26 of these were attributed to Gates 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
1995	Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. v. Bank of America NT&SA· Concurrence†	32 Cal. App. 4th 424	59
1930	Evans v. Superior Court	290 P. 662	42
1987	Yates v. Pollock	194 Cal. App. 3d 195	39
1930	People v. Frahm	290 P. 678	37
1930	Klein Norton Co. v. Cohen	290 P. 613	36
1987	Guild Mortgage Co. v. Heller· Concurrence†	193 Cal. App. 3d 1505	32
1992	Free v. Republic Insurance	8 Cal. App. 4th 1726	31
1988	Gross v. Recabaren	206 Cal. App. 3d 771	30
1982	People v. Hill	134 Cal. App. 3d 1055	27
1993	Delaney v. Superior Fast Freight†	14 Cal. App. 4th 590	25
1985	People v. Holloway	176 Cal. App. 3d 150	25
1982	Witherspoon v. Superior Court· Concurrence†	133 Cal. App. 3d 24	22
1930	Hartke v. Abbott	289 P. 206	22
1993	Kaiser Found. Hospitals, Inc. v. SUPERIOR COURT OF LOS ANGELES CTY.	19 Cal. App. 4th 513	20
1992	Martin v. Fisher	11 Cal. App. 4th 118	20

Showing the 15 most-cited of 123 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 Donald N. Gates on?: Donald N. Gates 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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12 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).