How do judges of the Michigan Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Court of Appeals / Joined 1987 / Served to 2003

Gary R. McDonald

Judge, Michigan Court of Appeals

Gary R. McDonald was a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1987. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1987–2003 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1987	Michigan Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, McDonald authored 98 published opinions for the court (1987–2002), plus 15 dissents and 10 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Launsburry (75 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. 117 of these were attributed to McDonald 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
1996	People v. Launsburry†	551 N.W.2d 460	75
2000	Teadt v. Lutheran Church Missouri Synod†	603 N.W.2d 816	71
2000	Caldwell v. Chapman†	610 N.W.2d 264	66
1993	People v. Ratkov†	505 N.W.2d 886	61
2001	Timko v. Oakwood Custom Coating, Inc· Dissent†	625 N.W.2d 101	47
2001	People v. Canales†	624 N.W.2d 439	45
2000	In Re RFF†	617 N.W.2d 745	37
1995	LaMothe v. Auto Club Insurance· Concurrence†	543 N.W.2d 42	31
1992	People v. Wilson†	487 N.W.2d 822	30
1998	Mayor of Detroit v. State†	579 N.W.2d 378	28
1998	Ray Township v. B & BS Gun Club†	575 N.W.2d 63	26
1993	People v. Powell· Concurrence†	506 N.W.2d 894	25
1995	MEAGHER v. McNEELY & LINCOLN, INC	536 N.W.2d 851	24
2000	Michigan Education Ass'n Political Action Committee v. Secretary of State· Dissent†	616 N.W.2d 234	22
1993	Midland Cogeneration Venture Ltd. Partnership v. Public Service Commission†	501 N.W.2d 573	21

Showing the 15 most-cited of 123 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 Michigan Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Gary R. McDonald on?: Gary R. McDonald was a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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