How do judges of the Court of Appeals of Arizona reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Court of Appeals of Arizona / Joined 1979 / Served to 1996

Joe W. Contreras

Judge, Court of Appeals of Arizona

Joe W. Contreras was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Arizona, who joined the court in 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1933–2013
Tenure: 1979–1996 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	Court of Appeals of Arizona	–	–

Education

University of Arizona

Judicial Record

In our data, Contreras authored 211 published opinions for the court (1979–1996), plus 9 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: GM Development Corp. v. Community American Mortgage Corp. (99 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. 67 of these were attributed to Contreras 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
1990	GM Development Corp. v. Community American Mortgage Corp.	795 P.2d 827	99
1987	Gilbert v. Board of Medical Examiners	745 P.2d 617	98
1984	Thomas v. Thomas· Dissent†	690 P.2d 105	70
1989	Duquette v. Superior Court	778 P.2d 634	56
1981	Fendler v. Phoenix Newspapers, Inc.	636 P.2d 1257	53
1995	Premier Financial Services. v. Citibank	912 P.2d 1309	51
1982	State v. Moreno· Dissent†	655 P.2d 23	45
1992	State v. Womack· Concurrence†	847 P.2d 609	40
1994	State v. Pinto	880 P.2d 1139	39
1986	Continental Townhouses East Unit One Ass'n v. Brockbank	733 P.2d 1120	35
1993	Guzman v. Guzman	854 P.2d 1169	34
1990	Stevens/Leinweber/Sullens, Inc. v. Holm Development & Management, Inc.	795 P.2d 1308	34
1981	Godbey v. ROOSEVELT SCH. DIST. NO. 66, ETC.	638 P.2d 235	34
1992	Thomas v. Liberty Mutual Insurance	842 P.2d 1335	32
1994	State v. Berryman	875 P.2d 850	28

Showing the 15 most-cited of 225 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 Court of Appeals of Arizona reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Joe W. Contreras on?: Joe W. Contreras was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Arizona.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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