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 1970 / Served to 1991

Jack E. Goertzen

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Jack E. Goertzen was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1970. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1970–1991 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1970	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1988	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Goertzen authored 32 published opinions for the court (1978–1991), plus 1 dissent and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Gerard v. Ross (37 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 Goertzen 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	Gerard v. Ross†	204 Cal. App. 3d 968	37
1978	Arbaugh v. Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Co.	80 Cal. App. 3d 500	32
1990	Marshall v. Department of Water & Power	219 Cal. App. 3d 1124	30
1990	County of Los Angeles v. Superior Court	222 Cal. App. 3d 647	28
1991	Carpenter v. City of Los Angeles	230 Cal. App. 3d 923	23
1991	Mars v. Wedbush Morgan Securities, Inc.	231 Cal. App. 3d 1608	21
1988	Baer v. Associated Life Insurance Co.	202 Cal. App. 3d 117	17
1991	People v. McDade	230 Cal. App. 3d 118	13
1978	People v. Rath Packing Co.	85 Cal. App. 3d 308	13
1990	Kizer v. Ortiz	219 Cal. App. 3d 1055	11
1991	Mann v. Community Redevelopment Agency	233 Cal. App. 3d 1143	10
1989	Coats v. K-Mart Corp.	215 Cal. App. 3d 961	10
1989	Hardeman v. Thomas	208 Cal. App. 3d 153	10
1990	Olson Partnership v. Gaylord Plating Lab, Inc.	226 Cal. App. 3d 235	8
1989	Jasperson v. Jessica's Nail Clinic· Dissent†	216 Cal. App. 3d 1099	8

Showing the 15 most-cited of 34 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 Jack E. Goertzen on?: Jack E. Goertzen 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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20 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).