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 2015 / Active

John Lawrence Segal

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

John Lawrence Segal is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), serving since 2015. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2015 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2001	Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles	–	–
2015	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Williams College		1982
University of Southern California		1987

Judicial Record

In our data, Segal authored 23 published opinions for the court (2016–2019), plus 2 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Atkins v. City of Los Angeles (85 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. 26 of these were attributed to Segal 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
2017	Atkins v. City of Los Angeles†	8 Cal. App. 5th 696	85
2019	Cohen v. TNP 2008 Participating Notes Program, LLC†	243 Cal. Rptr. 3d 340	69
2017	Julian v. Mission Community Hospital†	11 Cal. App. 5th 360	55
2016	People v. Fedalizo· Dissent†	246 Cal. App. 4th 98	49
2018	People v. Billingsley†	232 Cal. Rptr. 3d 277	46
2016	De Vries v. Regents of the University of California†	6 Cal. App. 5th 574	32
2016	People v. Abdallah†	246 Cal. App. 4th 736	30
2019	Diaz v. Sohnen Enters.· Dissent†	245 Cal. Rptr. 3d 827	27
2016	Babbitt v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County†	246 Cal. App. 4th 1135	25
2019	Jenni Rivera Enters., LLC v. Latin World Entm't Holdings, Inc.†	249 Cal. Rptr. 3d 122	24
2017	Vaquero v. Stoneledge Furniture, LLC†	9 Cal. App. 5th 98	23
2016	People v. Calvin S.†	5 Cal. App. 5th 522	23
2017	ECC Capital Corp. v. Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP†	9 Cal. App. 5th 885	19
2017	Shahbazian v. City of Rancho Palos Verdes†	225 Cal. Rptr. 3d 772	18
2016	Drexler v. Petersen†	4 Cal. App. 5th 1181	18

Showing the 15 most-cited of 26 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 is John Lawrence Segal on?: John Lawrence Segal is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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11 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).