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 1984 / Served to 2015

Fred Woods

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Fred Woods was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1984. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1935 · age 91
Tenure: 1984–2015 · 30 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1984	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1988	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Woods authored 44 published opinions for the court (1996–2014), plus 7 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Albarran (389 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. 68 of these were attributed to Woods 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
2007	People v. Albarran†	57 Cal. Rptr. 3d 92	389
1999	Nelson v. Anderson†	84 Cal. Rptr. 2d 753	153
2001	People v. Cleveland†	104 Cal. Rptr. 2d 641	149
1997	People v. Mendoza· Concurrence†	59 Cal. App. 4th 1333	134
2009	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. T.K.†	174 Cal. App. 4th 1426	99
1997	People v. Sanchez†	58 Cal. App. 4th 1435	67
2009	Broberg v. Guardian Life Insurance Co. of America· Dissent†	171 Cal. App. 4th 912	48
2006	Wayne v. Staples, Inc.· Concurrence†	37 Cal. Rptr. 3d 544	43
1996	Heller v. Pillsbury Madison & Sutro†	50 Cal. App. 4th 1367	43
1999	Filippo Industries, Inc. v. Sun Insurance· Concurrence†	88 Cal. Rptr. 2d 881	41
2013	People v. Wahidi†	222 Cal. App. 4th 802	39
2009	Birke v. Oakwood Worldwide†	169 Cal. App. 4th 1540	38
1997	Yoshioka v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County†	58 Cal. App. 4th 972	37
1996	People v. Guzman· Concurrence†	45 Cal. App. 4th 1023	37
2009	Garcia v. Santana· Concurrence†	174 Cal. App. 4th 464	34

Showing the 15 most-cited of 68 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 Fred Woods on?: Fred Woods was 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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30 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).