How do judges of the New York Appellate Division reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Appellate Division / Joined 1981 / Served to 1987

James F. Niehoff

Justice, New York Appellate Division

James F. Niehoff was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division, who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1981–1987 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	New York Appellate Division	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Niehoff authored 39 published opinions for the court (1982–1987), plus 3 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Wolowitz (103 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. 46 of these were attributed to Niehoff 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
1983	State v. Wolowitz· Concurrence†	96 A.D.2d 47	103
1984	Merchants Mutual Insurance v. Arzillo†	98 A.D.2d 495	68
1983	Mann Theatres Corp. of California v. Mid-Island Shopping Plaza Co.· Concurrence†	94 A.D.2d 466	64
1983	Hughson v. St. Francis Hospital†	93 A.D.2d 491	62
1985	Watkins v. Fromm†	108 A.D.2d 233	49
1985	People v. Donovon†	107 A.D.2d 433	43
1983	United Calendar Manufacturing Corp. v. Huang†	94 A.D.2d 176	39
1982	People v. Dykes†	86 A.D.2d 191	38
1985	Coco v. Coco†	107 A.D.2d 21	30
1982	Swidler v. World-Wide Volkswagen Corp.†	85 A.D.2d 239	30
1987	In re Tax Foreclosure No. 35†	127 A.D.2d 220	28
1985	Forte v. Kaneka America Corp.†	110 A.D.2d 81	28
1986	Meroni v. Holy Spirit Ass'n for Unification of World Christianity†	119 A.D.2d 200	25
1984	Long Island Rail Road v. Long Island Lighting Co.†	103 A.D.2d 156	22
1985	Epstein v. Mediterranean Motors, Inc.†	109 A.D.2d 340	17

Showing the 15 most-cited of 46 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 New York Appellate Division reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was James F. Niehoff on?: James F. Niehoff was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division.

Sources

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

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6 years on the New York Appellate Division. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).