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 1989 / Served to 1993

James C. Downey

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

James C. Downey was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 1989. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1989–1993 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Downey authored 720 published opinions for the court (1965–1993), plus 3 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Hidden Harbour Estates, Inc. v. Norman (92 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. 84 of these were attributed to Downey 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
1975	Hidden Harbour Estates, Inc. v. Norman	309 So. 2d 180	92
1987	Richardson v. City of Pompano Beach	511 So. 2d 1121	60
1975	McDonald v. State	321 So. 2d 453	60
1975	Siegel v. Abramowitz	309 So. 2d 234	57
1976	McAbee v. Edwards	340 So. 2d 1167	46
1968	Klondike, Inc. v. Blair	211 So. 2d 41	43
1982	Irving v. Doctors Hosp. of Lake Worth, Inc.	415 So. 2d 55	39
1986	GEN. ACC. v. Borg-Warner Acceptance Corp.	483 So. 2d 505	38
1975	DeLaune v. Liberty Mutual Ins. Co.	314 So. 2d 601	36
1973	Glusman v. Lieberman	285 So. 2d 29	36
1978	Bank of Wessington v. Winters Gov't SEC. Corp.	361 So. 2d 757	35
1974	City of Apopka v. Orange County	299 So. 2d 657	35
1987	Scheller v. American Medical Intern., Inc.	502 So. 2d 1268	33
1985	Garrison Retirement Home v. Hancock	484 So. 2d 1257	32
1976	Santini Brothers, Inc. v. Grover	338 So. 2d 79	32

Showing the 15 most-cited of 726 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 James C. Downey on?: James C. Downey was a Judge of the Florida District Courts 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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4 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).