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 1988 / Active

Franklin Daniel Elia

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Franklin Daniel Elia is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 1988. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1950 · age 76
Tenure: Since 1988 · 37 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1986	Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara	–	–
1988	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Santa Clara University		1972
Santa Clara University		1975

Judicial Record

In our data, Elia authored 295 published opinions for the court (1989–2019), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: In Re Beatrice M. (242 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. 98 of these were attributed to Elia 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
1994	In Re Beatrice M.	29 Cal. App. 4th 1411	242
1995	Landry v. Berryessa Union School District	39 Cal. App. 4th 691	210
2010	Santa Clara County Department of Family & Children's Services v. C.K.†	190 Cal. App. 4th 102	193
1993	In Re Sheila B.	19 Cal. App. 4th 187	188
2012	Debrunner v. Deutsche Bank National Trust Co.†	204 Cal. App. 4th 433	138
2006	Bustamante v. Intuit, Inc.	45 Cal. Rptr. 3d 692	137
2011	People v. Lopez†	198 Cal. App. 4th 698	132
1992	People v. Senior	3 Cal. App. 4th 765	131
2007	Linear Technology Corp. v. Applied Materials, Inc.†	152 Cal. App. 4th 115	128
1992	First Nationwide Savings v. Perry	11 Cal. App. 4th 1657	122
2012	People v. Kennedy†	209 Cal. App. 4th 385	116
2019	People v. Santos· Dissent†	251 Cal. Rptr. 3d 483	114
2011	Doe v. United States Swimming, Inc.†	200 Cal. App. 4th 1424	109
1992	Unilogic, Inc. v. Burroughs Corp.	10 Cal. App. 4th 612	103
2005	Ajaxo Inc. v. E Trade Group, Inc.	37 Cal. Rptr. 3d 221	102

Showing the 15 most-cited of 296 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 is Franklin Daniel Elia on?: Franklin Daniel Elia is an Associate Justice of the California Court 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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37 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).