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 1919 / Served to 1929

Frank S. Brittain

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Frank S. Brittain was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1919. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1919–1929 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1919	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Brittain authored 93 published opinions for the court (1919–1920), plus 1 dissent and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Aitken v. Roche (48 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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1920	Aitken v. Roche	292 P. 464	48
1920	Hynes v. White	190 P. 836	40
1919	Gousse v. Lowe	183 P. 295	40
1919	County of Alameda v. Tieslau	186 P. 398	35
1919	Figone v. Guisti· Dissent	185 P. 694	25
1920	Dunlap v. Commercial National Bank of Los Angeles	195 P. 688	22
1919	Powell v. Powell	180 P. 346	22
1920	Dolan v. Superior Court	190 P. 469	19
1919	Spotton v. Dyer	184 P. 23	19
1920	People v. Kaufman	193 P. 953	18
1919	Beck v. Ransome-Crummey Co.	184 P. 431	18
1919	Norton v. Newerf	187 P. 57	17
1919	Hutchinson Co. v. Coughlin	184 P. 435	16
1920	Wolff v. City of Los Angeles	193 P. 862	15
1920	Ray v. American Photo Player Co.	189 P. 130	15

Showing the 15 most-cited of 96 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. Brittain on?: Frank S. Brittain was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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10 years 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).