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 1986 / Served to 2005

John F. Lawton

Justice, New York Appellate Division

John F. Lawton was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division, who joined the court in 1986. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1986–2005 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1986	New York Appellate Division	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Lawton authored 39 published opinions for the court (1986–2005), plus 46 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Ruben v. American & Foreign Insurance (35 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. 90 of these were attributed to Lawton 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
1992	Ruben v. American & Foreign Insurance†	185 A.D.2d 63	35
1986	Pietra v. State· Dissent†	125 A.D.2d 936	29
1990	Finocchio v. Finocchio· Dissent†	162 A.D.2d 1044	28
1995	Norton v. Canandaigua City School District†	208 A.D.2d 282	26
1999	Reis v. Zimmer†	263 A.D.2d 136	25
1990	People v. Dunn· Concurrence†	155 A.D.2d 75	25
1994	Okie v. Village of Hamburg†	196 A.D.2d 228	22
1993	National Union Fire Insurance v. Ranger Insurance†	190 A.D.2d 395	22
1991	Girard v. Board of Education of City School District of City of Buffalo†	168 A.D.2d 183	22
1994	Price v. Brown Group, Inc.†	206 A.D.2d 195	21
1990	DiCaprio v. DiCaprio· Dissent†	162 A.D.2d 944	19
1993	Morris v. Snappy Car Rental, Inc.†	189 A.D.2d 115	18
1987	Jordan v. Britton†	128 A.D.2d 315	18
2000	Dorsey v. Yantambwe· Dissent†	276 A.D.2d 108	17
2002	Morgan v. Town of West Bloomfield· Dissent†	295 A.D.2d 902	15

Showing the 15 most-cited of 90 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 was John F. Lawton on?: John F. Lawton was 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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19 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).