How do judges of the New York Appellate Division reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Appellate Division / Joined 1994 / Active

Edward O. Spain

Justice, New York Appellate Division

Edward O. Spain is a Justice of the New York Appellate Division, serving since 1994. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1994 · 32 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1994	New York Appellate Division	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Spain authored 2,423 published opinions for the court (1995–2013), plus 19 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Echavarria (303 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. 2,455 of these were attributed to Spain 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
2008	People v. Echavarria†	53 A.D.3d 859	303
1999	Powers v. Lino Del Zotto & Son Builders, Inc.†	266 A.D.2d 668	257
2006	People v. Leader†	27 A.D.3d 901	253
2003	Hamlin Beach Camping, Catering, & Concessions Corp. v. State†	303 A.D.2d 849	252
1995	Marangos Construction Corp. v. New York State Department of Labor†	216 A.D.2d 758	251
1999	B.J. 96 Corp. v. Mester†	262 A.D.2d 732	245
2009	LaPlaca v. Schell†	68 A.D.3d 1478	241
2010	Firemen's Ass'n v. 99 Washington, LLC†	73 A.D.3d 1320	239
2012	People v. Carnevale†	101 A.D.3d 1375	159
2002	People v. Kowalski†	291 A.D.2d 669	159
2011	Middlemiss v. Pratt†	86 A.D.3d 658	153
2006	In re Shawndalaya†	31 A.D.3d 823	147
2013	McCaffrey v. McCaffrey†	107 A.D.3d 1106	144
1999	McEnaney v. State†	267 A.D.2d 748	139
1999	People v. Dolphy†	257 A.D.2d 681	137

Showing the 15 most-cited of 2,455 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 New York Appellate Division reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court is Edward O. Spain on?: Edward O. Spain is a Justice of the New York Appellate Division.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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32 years on the New York Appellate Division. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).