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 1982 / Served to 1990

John W. Holmdahl

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

John W. Holmdahl was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1982–1990 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Holmdahl authored 45 published opinions for the court (1983–1990), plus 6 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Slaughter v. Legal Process & Courier Service (44 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. 13 of these were attributed to Holmdahl 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
1984	Slaughter v. Legal Process & Courier Service	162 Cal. App. 3d 1236	44
1986	Cutter v. Brownbridge	183 Cal. App. 3d 836	40
1989	Winston Square Homeowner's Ass'n v. Centex West, Inc.	213 Cal. App. 3d 282	34
1985	United States Cold Storage v. Great Western Savings & Loan Ass'n	165 Cal. App. 3d 1214	33
1983	Travelers Ins. Companies v. Superior Court	143 Cal. App. 3d 436	33
1984	Economy Lumber Co. of Oakland, Inc. v. Insurance Co. of North America	157 Cal. App. 3d 641	30
1984	Dow Jones & Co. v. Avenel	151 Cal. App. 3d 144	30
1990	Continental Casualty Co. v. Royal Insurance of America	219 Cal. App. 3d 111	23
1987	People v. Jackson	196 Cal. App. 3d 380	23
1985	People v. Ballard	174 Cal. App. 3d 982	23
1983	Holley v. J & S SWEEPING CO.· Concurrence†	143 Cal. App. 3d 588	22
1990	Aronow v. LaCroix	219 Cal. App. 3d 1039	19
1988	Maloney v. American Pharmaceutical Co.	207 Cal. App. 3d 282	18
1983	Parr v. Superior Court	139 Cal. App. 3d 440	18
1984	People v. Martinez· Dissent†	157 Cal. App. 3d 660	17

Showing the 15 most-cited of 53 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 W. Holmdahl on?: John W. Holmdahl 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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7 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).