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 1964 / Served to 1982

Gordon L. Files

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Gordon L. Files was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1964. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1964–1982 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1964	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Files authored 430 published opinions for the court (1962–1982), plus 17 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Lewis (96 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. 86 of these were attributed to Files 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
1966	People v. Lewis	240 Cal. App. 2d 546	96
1980	In Re Sosa	102 Cal. App. 3d 1002	60
1969	MacDonald v. Joslyn	275 Cal. App. 2d 282	59
1970	People v. Warburton	7 Cal. App. 3d 815	53
1966	People v. Garrison	246 Cal. App. 2d 343	50
1966	Katz v. American Motorist Insurance	244 Cal. App. 2d 886	49
1979	Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher v. Superior Court of L.A. Cty.	94 Cal. App. 3d 347	46
1963	Bertero v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County	216 Cal. App. 2d 213	43
1963	Tate v. Superior Court	213 Cal. App. 2d 238	43
1970	Kozlowsky v. Westminster National Bank	6 Cal. App. 3d 593	40
1964	People v. Roth	228 Cal. App. 2d 522	38
1981	People v. Jardine	116 Cal. App. 3d 907	37
1979	Bindrim v. Mitchell· Dissent†	92 Cal. App. 3d 61	36
1973	People v. Escobedo	35 Cal. App. 3d 32	36
1969	Walker v. Department of Motor Vehicles	274 Cal. App. 2d 793	36

Showing the 15 most-cited of 455 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 Gordon L. Files on?: Gordon L. Files was a 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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17 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).