How do judges of the Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Florida District Courts of Appeal / Joined 1977 / Served to 1993

Gavin K. Letts

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Gavin K. Letts was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1977–1993 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Letts authored 624 published opinions for the court (1977–1993), plus 51 dissents and 58 concurrences. Most cited: McAllister v. McAllister (71 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. 428 of these were attributed to Letts 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
1977	McAllister v. McAllister	345 So. 2d 352	71
1989	State v. Burch	545 So. 2d 279	70
1978	Satz v. Perlmutter	362 So. 2d 160	70
1980	Wackenhut Corp. v. Maimone	389 So. 2d 656	60
1978	LeRetilley v. Harris	354 So. 2d 1213	46
1978	Westinghouse Credit v. Steven Lake Masonry	356 So. 2d 1329	45
1978	Lake Gateway Motor Inn, Inc. v. MATT'S SUNSHINE, ETC.	361 So. 2d 769	44
1984	Mischler v. State	458 So. 2d 37	41
1984	Davis v. State	458 So. 2d 42	40
1979	FMC Corp. v. Chatman	368 So. 2d 1307	35
1982	Hamilton v. Hamilton Steel Corp.	409 So. 2d 1111	34
1978	Nelson v. Reliance Ins. Co.	368 So. 2d 361	34
1977	King v. THOMPSON & McKINNON, AUCHINCLOSS, ETC.	352 So. 2d 1235	32
1983	Industrial Fire & Cas. Ins. Co. v. Romer	432 So. 2d 66	31
1977	Combs v. State	351 So. 2d 1103	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 734 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 Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Gavin K. Letts on?: Gavin K. Letts was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal.

Sources

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

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