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 1974 / Served to 1994

John E. Benson

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

John E. Benson was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1974. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1974–1994 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1974	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1986	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Benson authored 93 published opinions for the court (1986–1994), plus 2 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Gregori v. Bank of America (107 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. 18 of these were attributed to Benson 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
1989	Gregori v. Bank of America· Concurrence†	207 Cal. App. 3d 291	107
1994	California Grocers Assn. v. Bank of America	22 Cal. App. 4th 205	93
1990	Smith v. City and County of San Francisco	225 Cal. App. 3d 38	77
1987	In Re Marriage of Hoffmeister	191 Cal. App. 3d 351	76
1986	Malmstrom v. Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp.	187 Cal. App. 3d 299	75
1990	580 Folsom Associates v. Prometheus Development Co.	223 Cal. App. 3d 1	66
1987	American Continental Insurance v. C & Z Timber Co.	195 Cal. App. 3d 1271	65
1993	Lilienthal & Fowler v. Superior Court	12 Cal. App. 4th 1848	64
1992	Lu v. Dryclean-U.S.A. of California, Inc.	11 Cal. App. 4th 1490	64
1993	People v. Sutherland	17 Cal. App. 4th 602	53
1993	People v. Babcock	14 Cal. App. 4th 383	53
1990	Rebney v. Wells Fargo Bank	220 Cal. App. 3d 1117	49
1988	Hejmadi v. Amfac, Inc.	202 Cal. App. 3d 525	48
1989	People v. Thurman	209 Cal. App. 3d 817	46
1987	Truta v. Avis Rent a Car System, Inc.	193 Cal. App. 3d 802	44

Showing the 15 most-cited of 100 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 was John E. Benson on?: John E. Benson was 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).