How do judges of the California Court of Appeal reach the bench?

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

California Court of Appeal / Joined 1961 / Served to 1963

Frank S. Balthis

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Frank S. Balthis was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1961. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1961–1963 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1961	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Balthis authored 37 published opinions for the court (1961–1962). Most cited: Luis v. Orcutt Town Water Co. (26 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. 6 of these were attributed to Balthis 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
1962	Luis v. Orcutt Town Water Co.	204 Cal. App. 2d 433	26
1961	Hodges v. Standard Accident Insurance	198 Cal. App. 2d 564	24
1962	Southern California Gas Co. v. ABC Construction Co.	204 Cal. App. 2d 747	21
1962	People Ex Rel. State Park Commission v. Johnson	203 Cal. App. 2d 712	20
1961	Heves v. Kershaw	198 Cal. App. 2d 340	19
1962	Stafford v. Russell	201 Cal. App. 2d 719	15
1962	De Vrahnos v. George	203 Cal. App. 2d 210	13
1961	Robinson v. Robinson	198 Cal. App. 2d 193	13
1962	Monterey County Flood Control & Water Conservation District v. Hughes	201 Cal. App. 2d 197	12
1962	Estate of Bliss	199 Cal. App. 2d 630	10
1961	Lopp v. Lopp	198 Cal. App. 2d 474	10
1961	Wheeler v. Superior Mortgage Co.	196 Cal. App. 2d 822	10
1961	Arcturus Manufacturing Corp. v. Rork	198 Cal. App. 2d 208	9
1962	Turner v. Citizens National Bank	206 Cal. App. 2d 193	8
1962	Chadwick v. Condit	205 Cal. App. 2d 313	8

Showing the 15 most-cited of 37 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 California Court of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Frank S. Balthis on?: Frank S. Balthis was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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1 year on the California Court of Appeal. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).