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 1972 / Served to 1974

Howell Charles Cook

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Howell Charles Cook was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 1972. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1972–1974 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1972	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Cook authored 5 published opinions for the court (1985–1989). Most cited: Abraham v. State (10 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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1988	Abraham v. State	532 So. 2d 91	10
1988	State Farm Fire & Cas. Co. v. Cronk	530 So. 2d 445	9
1985	Reserve Life Ins. Co. v. Lomolino	474 So. 2d 1210	4
1989	Lachance v. Sagumeri	537 So. 2d 665	3
1985	Hillsboro Light Towers, Inc. v. Sherrill	474 So. 2d 1219	1

Showing the 5 most-cited of 5 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 Howell Charles Cook on?: Howell Charles Cook 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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2 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).