How do judges of the Court of Appeals of Minnesota reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Court of Appeals of Minnesota / Joined 2011 / Active

Edward J. Cleary

Judge, Court of Appeals of Minnesota

Edward J. Cleary is a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Minnesota, serving since 2011. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2011 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2011	Court of Appeals of Minnesota	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Cleary authored 40 published opinions for the court (2012–2019), plus 2 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Staffing Specifix, Inc. v. TempWorks Management Services, Inc. (18 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. 43 of these were attributed to Cleary 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
2017	Staffing Specifix, Inc. v. TempWorks Management Services, Inc.†	896 N.W.2d 115	18
2015	State of Minnesota v. David Ray Bennett· Concurrence†	867 N.W.2d 539	16
2014	Minnesota Transitions Charter School v. Commissioner of Minnesota Department of Education†	844 N.W.2d 223	15
2014	State v. Thiel†	846 N.W.2d 605	12
2015	Toyota-Lift of Minnesota, Inc. v. American Warehouse Systems, LLC, and third party v. Les Nielsen, third party†	868 N.W.2d 689	10
2015	Patrick Hammer Fay, Relator v. Department of Employment and Economic Development†	860 N.W.2d 385	10
2016	State of Minnesota v. Gregory Allen Olson†	887 N.W.2d 692	7
2013	State v. Essex†	838 N.W.2d 805	7
2014	Ptacek v. Earthsoils, Inc.†	844 N.W.2d 535	6
2013	Gallagher v. BNSF Railway Co.†	829 N.W.2d 85	6
2016	Marriage of Baertsch v. Baertsch†	886 N.W.2d 235	5
2015	In Re the ESTATE OF Esther Caroline SULLIVAN, Decedent†	868 N.W.2d 750	5
2015	In the Matter of the CIVIL COMMITMENT OF: Brent Charles NIELSEN†	863 N.W.2d 399	5
2013	Marriage of Anh Phuong Le v. Holter†	838 N.W.2d 797	4
2018	In re Poole†	921 N.W.2d 62	3

Showing the 15 most-cited of 43 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 Court of Appeals of Minnesota reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court is Edward J. Cleary on?: Edward J. Cleary is a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Minnesota.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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15 years on the Court of Appeals of Minnesota. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).