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 1989 / Served to 1996

James R. Lambden

Justice, California Court of Appeal

James R. Lambden was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1989. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1989–1996 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Lambden authored 97 published opinions for the court (1996–2010). Most cited: Kashmiri v. Regents of the University of California (137 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
2007	Kashmiri v. Regents of the University of California	67 Cal. Rptr. 3d 635	137
1997	Garcia v. Hejmadi	58 Cal. App. 4th 674	109
1998	Sears v. Baccaglio	60 Cal. App. 4th 1136	94
1997	Alameda Cty. Soc. Serv. Agency v. Catherine R.	54 Cal. App. 4th 1131	90
2006	Andrews v. Foster Wheeler LLC	41 Cal. Rptr. 3d 229	79
2003	People v. Valtakis	130 Cal. Rptr. 2d 133	73
1997	People v. Lucas	55 Cal. App. 4th 721	72
1999	In Re Janee J.	87 Cal. Rptr. 2d 634	71
1999	Scheiding v. Dinwiddie Construction Co.	81 Cal. Rptr. 2d 360	71
2007	People v. Garry	67 Cal. Rptr. 3d 849	68
2007	People v. Stuart	67 Cal. Rptr. 3d 129	66
1998	Pazderka v. Caballeros Dimas Alang, Inc.	62 Cal. App. 4th 658	66
1996	People v. Granado	49 Cal. App. 4th 317	62
2007	People v. Zapisek	54 Cal. Rptr. 3d 873	59
2005	People v. Houston	29 Cal. Rptr. 3d 818	56

Showing the 15 most-cited of 97 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 James R. Lambden on?: James R. Lambden was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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6 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).