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 1979 / Served to 1988

Frank Upchurch Jr.

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Frank Upchurch Jr. was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1922–2012
Tenure: 1979–1988 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

Washington and Lee University
University of Florida

Judicial Record

In our data, Upchurch authored 253 published opinions for the court (1984–1988), plus 9 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Douglass Fertilizers & Chemical, Inc. v. McClung Landscaping (31 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. 120 of these were attributed to Upchurch 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
1984	Douglass Fertilizers & Chemical, Inc. v. McClung Landscaping	459 So. 2d 335	31
1984	Turner v. Trust for Public Land	445 So. 2d 1124	28
1984	KD Lewis Enterprises Corp. v. Smith	445 So. 2d 1032	28
1985	Papcun v. PIGGY BAG DISCOUNT SOUV., FOOD & GAS CORP.	472 So. 2d 880	27
1985	Nicholson v. Kellin	481 So. 2d 931	23
1984	Born v. Goldstein	450 So. 2d 262	23
1985	Kimbrough v. Rowe	479 So. 2d 867	22
1986	Howerton v. Howerton	491 So. 2d 614	21
1985	Freeman v. Freeman	468 So. 2d 326	21
1986	Richards Enterprises v. Swofford	495 So. 2d 1210	19
1986	Eugene W. Kelsey v. ARCHIT. OPENINGS	484 So. 2d 610	19
1986	Snook v. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co.	485 So. 2d 496	18
1985	FIRST NATIONAL BK. OF FLA. v. Moffett	479 So. 2d 312	18
1984	Giles v. Sun Bank, NA	450 So. 2d 258	18
1986	Mullen v. State	483 So. 2d 754	17

Showing the 15 most-cited of 264 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 was Frank Upchurch Jr. on?: Frank Upchurch Jr. was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal.

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 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).