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 2006 / Active

James A. Richman

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

James A. Richman is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2006. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2006 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2006	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of San Francisco

1965

Judicial Record

In our data, Richman authored 124 published opinions for the court (2000–2019), plus 1 dissent and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Nazir v. United Airlines, Inc. (254 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. 83 of these were attributed to Richman 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
2009	Nazir v. United Airlines, Inc.	178 Cal. App. 4th 243	254
2010	People v. Victor L.	182 Cal. App. 4th 902	204
2010	People v. Johnson	185 Cal. App. 4th 520	156
2011	Davenport v. Davenport†	194 Cal. App. 4th 1507	153
2013	Jolley v. Chase Home Finance, LLC†	213 Cal. App. 4th 872	146
2012	Hecimovich v. Encinal School Parent Teacher Organization†	203 Cal. App. 4th 450	122
2010	People v. Chappelone	183 Cal. App. 4th 1159	118
2008	Giraldo v. Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation	168 Cal. App. 4th 231	114
2011	Hill v. Roll International Corp.†	195 Cal. App. 4th 1295	97
2011	Grewal v. Jammu†	191 Cal. App. 4th 977	81
2012	Filbin v. Fitzgerald†	211 Cal. App. 4th 154	78
2010	People v. Vance	188 Cal. App. 4th 1182	74
2012	Transport Insurance v. TIG Insurance†	202 Cal. App. 4th 984	71
2009	In Re Marriage of Nurie	176 Cal. App. 4th 478	71
2015	People v. Mackey†	233 Cal. App. 4th 32	68

Showing the 15 most-cited of 127 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 is James A. Richman on?: James A. Richman is 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).