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 1990 / Served to 2014

E Thomas Fitzgerald

Judge, Michigan Court of Appeals

E Thomas Fitzgerald was a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1990. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1990–2014 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1990	Michigan Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Fitzgerald authored 124 published opinions for the court (1990–2014), plus 25 dissents and 35 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Abraham (538 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. 176 of these were attributed to Fitzgerald 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
2003	People v. Abraham· Concurrence†	662 N.W.2d 836	538
2005	Reed v. Reed· Dissent†	693 N.W.2d 825	380
2012	People v. King· Concurrence†	297 Mich. App. 465	269
2004	People v. Harris†	680 N.W.2d 17	181
1998	People v. Fike· Concurrence†	577 N.W.2d 903	165
1998	People v. Howard· Concurrence†	575 N.W.2d 16	151
2003	Advocacy Organization for Patients & Providers v. Auto Club Insurance· Concurrence†	670 N.W.2d 569	132
2003	Olson v. Olson†	671 N.W.2d 64	123
2003	Zdrojewski v. Murphy· Dissent†	657 N.W.2d 721	109
2011	People v. Steele†	292 Mich. App. 308	92
1992	People v. Wilson†	493 N.W.2d 471	85
1997	People v. Kennebrew	560 N.W.2d 354	76
1999	People v. Colon†	591 N.W.2d 692	71
2014	Forest Hills Cooperative v. City of Ann Arbor†	305 Mich. App. 572	62
2009	People v. DiPiazza†	778 N.W.2d 264	59

Showing the 15 most-cited of 184 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 E Thomas Fitzgerald on?: E Thomas Fitzgerald 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

24 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).