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 1976 / Served to 1982

Dorothy Comstock Riley

Judge, Michigan Court of Appeals

Dorothy Comstock Riley was a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1976. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1976–1982 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	Michigan Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Riley authored 188 published opinions for the court (1976–1983), plus 24 dissents and 20 concurrences. Most cited: BASIC Food INDUSTRIES, INC v. GRANT (65 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. 209 of these were attributed to Riley 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
1981	BASIC Food INDUSTRIES, INC v. GRANT†	310 N.W.2d 26	65
1980	In the Matter of Baby X†	293 N.W.2d 736	61
1977	People v. Till· Concurrence†	263 N.W.2d 586	58
1982	Postill v. Booth Newspapers, Inc†	325 N.W.2d 511	55
1979	People v. Shannon†	276 N.W.2d 546	49
1981	Drouillard v. Metropolitan Life Insurance†	310 N.W.2d 15	43
1978	People v. Hoffman†	265 N.W.2d 94	41
1982	Joba Const. Co., Inc. v. Burns & Roe, Inc.†	329 N.W.2d 760	40
1980	Lark v. the Detroit Edison Co.†	297 N.W.2d 653	38
1979	People v. Roberson· Dissent†	282 N.W.2d 280	36
1980	People v. Rohn†	296 N.W.2d 315	35
1983	Slayton v. Michigan Host, Inc	332 N.W.2d 498	34
1981	Carnes v. Sheldon†	311 N.W.2d 747	34
1980	People v. LeFlore†	293 N.W.2d 628	33
1981	Pritts v. J I Case Co.†	310 N.W.2d 261	32

Showing the 15 most-cited of 232 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 was Dorothy Comstock Riley on?: Dorothy Comstock Riley was 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

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6 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).