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 1981 / Served to 1991

Gary Strankman

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Gary Strankman was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1981–1991 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1988	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Strankman authored 82 published opinions for the court (1980–2001), plus 1 dissent and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Flannery v. California Highway Patrol (126 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. 4 of these were attributed to Strankman 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
1998	Flannery v. California Highway Patrol	61 Cal. App. 4th 629	126
1996	Barton v. New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc.	43 Cal. App. 4th 1200	125
1994	People v. Jerry R.	29 Cal. App. 4th 1432	114
1996	Arntz Contracting Co. v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance	47 Cal. App. 4th 464	105
1992	Sierra Club v. County of Sonoma	6 Cal. App. 4th 1307	89
1991	Diamond Heights Homeowners Ass'n v. National American Insurance	227 Cal. App. 3d 563	67
1996	Mary Morgan, Inc. v. Melzark	49 Cal. App. 4th 765	66
1997	Quarterman v. Kefauver	55 Cal. App. 4th 1366	61
1995	Gomes v. County of Mendocino	37 Cal. App. 4th 977	58
1998	Terhune v. Superior Court	76 Cal. Rptr. 2d 841	55
1989	Wilkinson v. Times Mirror Corp.	215 Cal. App. 3d 1034	55
1995	Lineaweaver v. Plant Insulation Co.	31 Cal. App. 4th 1409	53
1980	People v. Ferrell	218 Cal. App. 3d 828	53
1991	Nancy B. v. Charlotte M.· Concurrence†	232 Cal. App. 3d 1239	51
1991	People v. Santamaria	229 Cal. App. 3d 269	46

Showing the 15 most-cited of 84 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 Gary Strankman on?: Gary Strankman 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

10 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).