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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Court of Appeals / Joined 1965 / Served to 1992

John H. Gillis

Judge, Michigan Court of Appeals

John H. Gillis was a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1965. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1965–1992 · 27 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1965	Michigan Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Gillis authored 783 published opinions for the court (1965–1992), plus 74 dissents and 39 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Brocato (214 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. 604 of these were attributed to Gillis 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
1969	People v. Brocato	169 N.W.2d 483	214
1972	Crowther v. Ross Chemical and Manufacturing Co.†	202 N.W.2d 577	148
1978	Trombetta v. Detroit, Toledo & Ironton Railroad†	265 N.W.2d 385	106
1980	Detroit Automobile Inter-Insurance Exchange v. Higginbotham†	290 N.W.2d 414	90
1986	Early Detection Center, PC v. New York Life Insurance	403 N.W.2d 830	87
1981	Schwartz v. Michigan Sugar Co.†	308 N.W.2d 459	67
1970	People v. Hutton†	175 N.W.2d 860	63
1979	S C Gray, Inc. v. Ford Motor Co.†	286 N.W.2d 34	61
1978	Tumbarella v. the Kroger Co.†	271 N.W.2d 284	58
1971	Bristow v. City of Woodhaven†	192 N.W.2d 322	56
1981	Morris v. Metriyakool· Concurrence†	309 N.W.2d 910	54
1983	Joos v. Drillock†	338 N.W.2d 736	48
1980	Waterford School District v. State Board of Education†	296 N.W.2d 328	47
1972	People v. Cotton†	197 N.W.2d 90	47
1984	Ferrell v. Vic Tanny International, Inc	357 N.W.2d 669	44

Showing the 15 most-cited of 897 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 Michigan Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was John H. Gillis on?: John H. Gillis was a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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