Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa / Joined 1998 / Served to 2004

John E. Allen

Judge, Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa

John E. Allen was a Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa (28 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1998. He previously served on the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1873–1945
Tenure: 1998–2004 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1924	New Hampshire Supreme Court	–	–
1998	Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa	–	–

Education

Dartmouth College
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Allen authored 553 published opinions for the court (1876–1943), plus 2 dissents. Most cited: McCarthy v. Souther (75 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. 1 of these was attributed to Allen 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
1927	McCarthy v. Souther	137 A. 445	75
1938	Rosenblum v. Griffin	197 A. 701	56
1926	Tullgren v. Amoskeag Manufacturing Co.	133 A. 4	53
1930	Chiuchiolo v. New England Wholesale Tailors	150 A. 540	43
1937	Travelers Insurance v. Greenough	190 A. 129	39
1942	Cloutier v. State Milk Control Board	28 A.2d 554	38
1936	Ferretti v. Jackson	188 A. 474	38
1934	Robinson v. Carroll	174 A. 772	37
1936	Wisutskie v. Malouin	186 A. 769	36
1943	Trustees of the Phillips-Exeter Academy v. Exeter	33 A.2d 665	35
1938	Stone v. Cray	200 A. 517	33
1925	Kenney v. Wong Len	128 A. 343	33
1928	Smith v. Twin State Gas & Electric Co.	144 A. 57	32
1934	Woolf v. Fuller	174 A. 193	31
1927	Shulinsky v. Boston & Maine Railroad	139 A. 189	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 557 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 Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was John E. Allen on?: John E. Allen was a Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa.

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 Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).