How do judges of the New York Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Court of Appeals / Joined 1963 / Served to 1972

Francis Bergan

Judge, New York Court of Appeals

Francis Bergan was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1963. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1902–1998
Tenure: 1963–1972 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1964	New York Court of Appeals	–	–
1963	New York Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Albany Law School

Judicial Record

In our data, Bergan authored 126 published opinions for the court (1964–1972), plus 63 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Schwartz v. Public Administrator (773 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. 196 of these were attributed to Bergan 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
1969	Schwartz v. Public Administrator· Dissent†	24 N.Y.2d 65	773
1972	Neumeier v. Kuehner· Dissent†	31 N.Y.2d 121	338
1969	Koump v. Smith· Concurrence†	25 N.Y.2d 287	319
1969	A & J Buyers, Inc. v. Johnson, Drake & Piper, Inc.· Dissent†	25 N.Y.2d 265	252
1965	People v. Levy†	15 N.Y.2d 159	219
1972	Van Valkenburgh, Nooger & Neville, Inc. v. Hayden Publishing Co.†	30 N.Y.2d 34	191
1966	People v. La Belle· Dissent†	18 N.Y.2d 405	183
1971	Austin Instrument, Inc. v. Loral Corp.· Dissent†	29 N.Y.2d 124	160
1967	People v. Lombardi†	20 N.Y.2d 266	146
1968	Toth v. Community Hospital· Dissent†	22 N.Y.2d 255	140
1971	People v. Dixon· Dissent†	29 N.Y.2d 55	131
1964	People v. Rivera†	14 N.Y.2d 441	131
1970	People v. Rahming· Dissent†	26 N.Y.2d 411	122
1969	Morris Cohon & Co. v. Russell· Dissent†	23 N.Y.2d 569	117
1965	Lawes v. Board of Education†	16 N.Y.2d 302	115

Showing the 15 most-cited of 196 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 Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Francis Bergan on?: Francis Bergan was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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