How do judges of the New York Appellate Division reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Appellate Division / Joined 2000 / Active

John Lahtinen

Justice, New York Appellate Division

John Lahtinen is a Justice of the New York Appellate Division, serving since 2000. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2000 · 26 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	New York Appellate Division	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Lahtinen authored 2,173 published opinions for the court (2000–2016), plus 36 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Houghtalen (248 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. 2,222 of these were attributed to Lahtinen 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
2011	People v. Houghtalen†	89 A.D.3d 1163	248
2011	Dickerson v. Thompson· Concurrence†	88 A.D.3d 121	248
2010	Rought v. Price Chopper Operating Co.†	73 A.D.3d 1414	155
2004	People v. Miller†	11 A.D.3d 729	150
2002	People v. Fleegle†	295 A.D.2d 760	146
2013	People v. Bush†	107 A.D.3d 1302	139
2008	In re Leala T.†	55 A.D.3d 1007	138
2004	In re Anthony K.†	11 A.D.3d 748	100
2010	Armstrong v. Armstrong†	72 A.D.3d 1409	49
2001	People v. Kemp†	288 A.D.2d 635	48
2013	People v. Mattis†	108 A.D.3d 872	40
2010	People v. Gregory†	78 A.D.3d 1246	40
2000	Boston v. Dunham†	274 A.D.2d 708	39
2006	People v. Khuong Dinh Pham†	31 A.D.3d 962	37
2014	Aida B. v. Alfredo C.†	114 A.D.3d 1046	36

Showing the 15 most-cited of 2,222 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 New York Appellate Division reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court is John Lahtinen on?: John Lahtinen is a Justice of the New York Appellate Division.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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26 years on the New York Appellate Division. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).