Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa / Joined 1982 / Served to 1996

Edward F. Merrill

Judge, Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa

Edward F. Merrill was a Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa, who joined the court in 1982. He previously served on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1883–1962
Tenure: 1982–1996 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1948	Maine Supreme Judicial Court	–	–
1982	Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa	–	–

Education

Bowdoin College
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Merrill authored 81 published opinions for the court (1948–1954), plus 1 concurrence. Most cited: Strout v. Burgess (57 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. 72 of these were attributed to Merrill 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
1949	Strout v. Burgess†	144 Me. 263	57
1950	Smith v. State†	75 A.2d 538	52
1951	Morris v. Goss†	83 A.2d 556	50
1951	Gendron v. Burnham†	82 A.2d 773	39
1949	Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. City of Portland†	144 Me. 250	36
1953	State v. Hamilton	100 A.2d 234	31
1950	Wade v. Warden of State Prison· Concurrence†	73 A.2d 128	26
1952	Sleeper†	147 Me. 302	22
1950	Kennebunk, Kennebunkport & Wells Water District v. Maine Turnpike Authority†	71 A.2d 520	22
1949	Boston & Maine Railroad v. Hannaford Bros.†	144 Me. 306	22
1952	First Universalist Soc. of Bath v. Swett†	90 A.2d 812	19
1948	State v. Boynton†	143 Me. 313	19
1953	Lipman Bros. v. Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co.†	100 A.2d 246	17
1953	State v. Rainey†	99 A.2d 78	16
1953	Hand v. Nickerson†	95 A.2d 813	16

Showing the 15 most-cited of 82 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 Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Edward F. Merrill on?: Edward F. Merrill was a Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa.

Sources

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

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13 years on the Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).