How do judges of the Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Florida District Courts of Appeal / Joined 1993 / Active

Emerson R. Thompson

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Emerson R. Thompson is a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, serving since 1993. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1993 · 33 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1993	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of Florida
Florida State University

Judicial Record

In our data, Thompson authored 893 published opinions for the court (1993–2009), plus 14 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: American Safety Insurance Service v. Griggs (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. 410 of these were attributed to Thompson 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
2007	American Safety Insurance Service v. Griggs	959 So. 2d 322	57
2007	STATE FARM FLORIDA INS. CO. v. Lorenzo	969 So. 2d 393	43
2005	Whitley v. Royal Trails Property	910 So. 2d 381	42
2005	Gallagher v. Dupont	918 So. 2d 342	34
2007	Starling v. Allstate Floridian Ins. Co.	956 So. 2d 511	33
1997	G.R.A. v. State†	688 So. 2d 1027	30
2006	Goodwin v. Blu Murray Ins. Agency, Inc.	939 So. 2d 1098	28
2006	State v. Subido	925 So. 2d 1052	28
2005	DEPT. OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION v. Hardy	907 So. 2d 655	28
2001	K.N.M. v. State†	793 So. 2d 1195	28
1998	Gaines v. Dept. of Children and Families	711 So. 2d 190	27
1994	Hunter v. State	639 So. 2d 72	27
2006	Matajek v. Skowronska	927 So. 2d 981	24
1996	Vick v. Vick	675 So. 2d 714	23
1996	Jones v. State	666 So. 2d 995	23

Showing the 15 most-cited of 923 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 Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is Emerson R. Thompson on?: Emerson R. Thompson is a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal.

Sources

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

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33 years on the Florida District Courts of Appeal. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).