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 1978 / Served to 2019

Gilbert Nares

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Gilbert Nares was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1978. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1978–2019 · 40 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1978	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1988	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Nares authored 265 published opinions for the court (1989–2019), plus 9 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: People v. White (212 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. 97 of these were attributed to Nares 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
2014	People v. White†	223 Cal. App. 4th 512	212
2007	Austin B. v. Escondido Union School District	57 Cal. Rptr. 3d 454	174
2005	US Ecology, Inc. v. State	28 Cal. Rptr. 3d 894	140
2004	Fitz v. NCR Corp.	13 Cal. Rptr. 3d 88	131
2012	San Diego County Health & Human Services Agency v. Christopher T.†	212 Cal. App. 4th 139	130
2016	Alki Partners, LP v. DB Fund Services, LLC†	4 Cal. App. 5th 574	127
2001	Dowling v. Zimmerman	103 Cal. Rptr. 2d 174	115
2009	Major v. Western Home Insurance	169 Cal. App. 4th 1197	98
2002	Giles v. Horn	123 Cal. Rptr. 2d 735	93
2001	Distefano v. Forester	102 Cal. Rptr. 2d 813	91
1997	Zavala v. Arce	58 Cal. App. 4th 915	84
2018	People v. Chavez†	231 Cal. Rptr. 3d 20	80
2011	Behnke v. State Farm General Insurance†	196 Cal. App. 4th 1443	79
1991	In Re Taya C.	2 Cal. App. 4th 1	77
2008	Donovan v. Poway Unified School District	167 Cal. App. 4th 567	76

Showing the 15 most-cited of 279 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 Gilbert Nares on?: Gilbert Nares 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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40 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).