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 2021

John Anthony Kline

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

John Anthony Kline was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1982. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1938 · age 88
Tenure: 1982–2021 · 39 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco	–	–
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Johns Hopkins University	with honors	1960
Cornell University	Public Administration	1962
Yale University		1965

Judicial Record

In our data, Kline authored 434 published opinions for the court (1983–2019), plus 17 dissents and 19 concurrences. Most cited: In Re Rocco M. (424 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. 143 of these were attributed to Kline 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
1991	In Re Rocco M.	1 Cal. App. 4th 814	424
2000	Morgan v. Regents of the University of California	105 Cal. Rptr. 2d 652	324
2003	Lavie v. Procter & Gamble Co.	129 Cal. Rptr. 2d 486	215
1997	Stirlen v. Supercuts, Inc.	51 Cal. App. 4th 1519	205
1992	People v. Housley	6 Cal. App. 4th 947	168
2005	MacIsaac v. Waste Management Collection & Recycling, Inc.	36 Cal. Rptr. 3d 650	158
2002	Children's Hospital & Medical Center v. Bonta	118 Cal. Rptr. 2d 629	158
1985	Berger v. Godden	163 Cal. App. 3d 1113	157
2008	1100 PARK LANE ASSOCIATES v. Feldman	74 Cal. Rptr. 3d 1	143
1999	Horn v. Cushman & Wakefield Western, Inc.	85 Cal. Rptr. 2d 459	138
2010	Greenwich S.F., LLC v. Wong†	190 Cal. App. 4th 739	117
2004	Whiteley v. Philip Morris, Inc.	11 Cal. Rptr. 3d 807	113
2000	GLEN C. v. Superior Court	93 Cal. Rptr. 2d 103	112
2007	Nakamura v. Parker	67 Cal. Rptr. 3d 286	108
1989	Gregori v. Bank of America	207 Cal. App. 3d 291	107

Showing the 15 most-cited of 470 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 Anthony Kline on?: John Anthony Kline was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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39 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).