How do judges of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia / Joined 1962 / Served to 1980

Fred H. Caplan

Justice, Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia

Fred H. Caplan was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, who joined the court in 1962. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1962–1980 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1962	Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Caplan authored 337 published opinions for the court (1962–1981), plus 11 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Perdue v. Coiner (321 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. 93 of these were attributed to Caplan 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
1973	Perdue v. Coiner	194 S.E.2d 657	321
1968	State v. Elder	165 S.E.2d 108	309
1970	Crockett v. Andrews	172 S.E.2d 384	229
1979	Hinkle v. Black· Concurrence†	262 S.E.2d 744	217
1977	Nichols v. Nichols	236 S.E.2d 36	164
1963	Walker v. Monongahela Power Company	131 S.E.2d 736	127
1977	Conner v. Griffith· Dissent†	160 W. Va. 680	117
1970	Intercity Realty Company v. Gibson	175 S.E.2d 452	116
1976	Lee v. Comer†	159 W. Va. 585	115
1980	Shanholtz v. Monongahela Power Co.	270 S.E.2d 178	95
1977	O'NEIL v. City of Parkersburg	237 S.E.2d 504	95
1964	Roberts Ex Rel. Roberts v. Gale	139 S.E.2d 272	93
1967	State v. Bailey	155 S.E.2d 850	91
1964	State Ex Rel. May v. Boles	139 S.E.2d 177	82
1967	Hundley v. Martinez	158 S.E.2d 159	79

Showing the 15 most-cited of 352 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 Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Fred H. Caplan on?: Fred H. Caplan was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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