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 1986 / Served to 1998

John Clinton Peterson

Justice, California Court of Appeal

John Clinton Peterson was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1986. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1986–1998 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

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

Judicial Record

In our data, Peterson authored 124 published opinions for the court (1989–1998), plus 4 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc. v. Superior Court (133 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. 12 of these were attributed to Peterson 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	Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc. v. Superior Court	211 Cal. App. 3d 758	133
1995	Lafayette Morehouse, Inc. v. Chronicle Publishing Co.	37 Cal. App. 4th 855	130
1994	Heather Farms Homeowners Assn. v. Robinson	21 Cal. App. 4th 1568	73
1995	Lafayette Morehouse, Inc. v. Chronicle Publishing Co.	39 Cal. App. 4th 1379	67
1993	Coit Drapery Cleaners, Inc. v. Sequoia Insurance	14 Cal. App. 4th 1595	61
1998	Battuello v. Battuello	64 Cal. App. 4th 842	50
1997	Friends of Old Trees v. Department of Forestry & Fire Protection· Concurrence†	52 Cal. App. 4th 1383	50
1992	Lauriedale Associates, Ltd. v. Wilson	7 Cal. App. 4th 1439	42
1995	City and County of San Francisco v. Cartagena	35 Cal. App. 4th 1061	41
1993	People v. Johnson	19 Cal. App. 4th 778	40
1997	People Ex Rel. Lungren v. Peron	59 Cal. App. 4th 1383	39
1990	Martinez v. Pacific Bell	225 Cal. App. 3d 1557	39
1993	Brewer v. Patel	20 Cal. App. 4th 1017	37
1989	People v. Brigham	216 Cal. App. 3d 1039	36
1992	People v. Ambrose	7 Cal. App. 4th 1917	34

Showing the 15 most-cited of 131 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 Clinton Peterson on?: John Clinton Peterson was a 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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12 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).