How do judges of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania / Joined 1995 / Served to 2000

Jim Flaherty

Judge, Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania

Jim Flaherty was a Judge of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1995. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1995–2000 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1995	Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Flaherty authored 242 published opinions for the court (1996–2006), plus 11 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Hoffmaster v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board (Senco Products, Inc.) (171 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. 217 of these were attributed to Flaherty 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
1998	Hoffmaster v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board (Senco Products, Inc.)†	721 A.2d 1152	171
1998	Sheridan v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board (Anzon, Inc.)†	713 A.2d 182	41
1998	Sheets v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review†	708 A.2d 884	41
2000	Saunders v. Commonwealth, Department of Corrections	749 A.2d 553	35
2000	Davis v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board	753 A.2d 905	33
2000	Empire Steel Castings, Inc. v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board	749 A.2d 1021	32
1998	Wertz v. Chapman Township†	709 A.2d 428	32
1997	Shrum v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review†	690 A.2d 796	31
1997	Farro v. Tax Claim Bureau†	704 A.2d 1137	30
1999	Mulberry Market, Inc. v. City of Philadelphia, Board of License & Inspection Review†	735 A.2d 761	28
2000	Gmerek v. State Ethics Commission· Dissent†	751 A.2d 1241	27
2000	Seamon v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board· Dissent†	761 A.2d 1258	25
1999	Chicchi v. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority· Dissent†	727 A.2d 604	25
1997	Heraeus Electro Nite Co. v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board†	697 A.2d 603	25
1999	Hunter v. Washington County Tax Bureau†	729 A.2d 142	24

Showing the 15 most-cited of 259 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 Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Jim Flaherty on?: Jim Flaherty was a Judge of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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5 years on the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).