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 1969 / Served to 1990

Harmon Groesbeck Scoville

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Harmon Groesbeck Scoville was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1922–2008
Tenure: 1969–1990 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1988	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Scoville authored 32 published opinions for the court (1979–1990), plus 3 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Nguyen (156 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. 6 of these were attributed to Scoville 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
1988	People v. Nguyen· Concurrence†	204 Cal. App. 3d 181	156
1989	Viejo Bancorp, Inc. v. Wood	217 Cal. App. 3d 200	51
1989	Brodkin v. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co.	217 Cal. App. 3d 210	46
1988	Fund for Environmental Defense v. County of Orange	204 Cal. App. 3d 1538	33
1989	Brenneman v. State of California	208 Cal. App. 3d 812	28
1988	Knighten v. Sam's Parking Valet	206 Cal. App. 3d 69	27
1989	Huntington Landmark Adult Community Ass'n v. Ross	213 Cal. App. 3d 1012	26
1989	Long v. Valentino· Concurrence†	216 Cal. App. 3d 1287	25
1989	People v. Huston	210 Cal. App. 3d 192	24
1989	People v. Valencia	207 Cal. App. 3d 1042	24
1988	People v. Sellers	203 Cal. App. 3d 1042	24
1989	People v. Michael D.	214 Cal. App. 3d 1610	23
1989	Allstate Insurance v. Interbank Financial Services	215 Cal. App. 3d 825	22
1989	Flynn v. Gorton	207 Cal. App. 3d 1550	22
1989	People v. American Bankers Insurance	215 Cal. App. 3d 1363	19

Showing the 15 most-cited of 35 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 Harmon Groesbeck Scoville on?: Harmon Groesbeck Scoville was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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21 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).