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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Massachusetts Appeals Court / Joined 1997 / Served to 1999

Francis X. Spina

Justice, Massachusetts Appeals Court

Francis X. Spina was a Justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court, who joined the court in 1997. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1997–1999 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1997	Massachusetts Appeals Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Spina authored 24 published opinions for the court (1998–1999), plus 2 dissents. Most cited: City of Haverhill v. George Brox, Inc. (73 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. 26 of these were attributed to Spina 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
1999	City of Haverhill v. George Brox, Inc.†	47 Mass. App. Ct. 717	73
1999	Sarvis v. Boston Safe Deposit & Trust Co.†	47 Mass. App. Ct. 86	69
1999	Atlas Tack Corp. v. Donabed†	47 Mass. App. Ct. 221	48
1998	Adoption of Warren†	44 Mass. App. Ct. 620	36
1999	Commerce Bank & Trust Co. v. Hayeck†	46 Mass. App. Ct. 687	31
1999	Adoption of Lorna†	46 Mass. App. Ct. 134	30
1999	Valcourt v. Zoning Board of Appeals†	48 Mass. App. Ct. 124	22
1998	Taylor's Case†	44 Mass. App. Ct. 495	17
1998	Massachusetts Broken Stone Co. v. Planning Board†	45 Mass. App. Ct. 738	14
1998	Clark v. Trumble†	44 Mass. App. Ct. 438	14
1998	Commonwealth v. Molloy†	44 Mass. App. Ct. 306	12
1999	Commonwealth v. Johnson†	46 Mass. App. Ct. 398	11
1998	Clendenning v. Worcester Insurance†	45 Mass. App. Ct. 658	11
1999	Bonfatti v. Zoning Board of Appeals†	48 Mass. App. Ct. 46	10
1999	Commonwealth v. Kruah†	47 Mass. App. Ct. 341	9

Showing the 15 most-cited of 26 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 Massachusetts Appeals Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Francis X. Spina on?: Francis X. Spina was a Justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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