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 1987 / Served to 1995

Douglas E. Swager

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Douglas E. Swager was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1987. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1987–1995 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1987	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Swager authored 72 published opinions for the court (1996–2008). Most cited: People v. Ramos (333 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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
2008	People v. Ramos	163 Cal. App. 4th 1082	333
2000	Shade Foods, Inc. v. Innovative Products Sales & Marketing, Inc.	93 Cal. Rptr. 2d 364	277
1998	Citizens for Open Access to Sand and Tide, Inc. v. Seadrift Ass'n	60 Cal. App. 4th 1053	126
2004	Bell v. Farmers Insurance Exchange	9 Cal. Rptr. 3d 544	105
2004	Vernon v. State of California	10 Cal. Rptr. 3d 121	83
2007	Harman v. City and County of San Francisco	69 Cal. Rptr. 3d 750	82
2008	Buller v. Sutter Health	74 Cal. Rptr. 3d 47	80
2002	Governor Gray Davis Committee v. American Taxpayers Alliance	125 Cal. Rptr. 2d 534	74
2008	People v. Yarbrough	169 Cal. App. 4th 303	69
2008	Shopoff & Cavallo LLP v. Hyon	167 Cal. App. 4th 1489	69
2007	DiPirro v. BONDO CORPORATION	62 Cal. Rptr. 3d 722	67
1996	Copp v. Paxton	45 Cal. App. 4th 829	67
1996	People v. Camba	50 Cal. App. 4th 857	64
1997	People v. Gillispie	60 Cal. App. 4th 429	61
2000	Dunkin v. Boskey	98 Cal. Rptr. 2d 44	55

Showing the 15 most-cited of 72 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 Douglas E. Swager on?: Douglas E. Swager was a 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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7 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).