Superior Court of California, County of Orange / Joined 1990 / Served to 2009

John T. Watson

Judge, Superior Court of California, County of Orange

John T. Watson was a Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Orange, who joined the court in 1990. He previously served on the New Mexico Supreme Court. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1908–2007
Tenure: 1990–2009 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	New Mexico Supreme Court	–	–
1990	Superior Court of California, County of Orange	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Watson authored 420 published opinions for the court (1924–1970), plus 6 dissents and 14 concurrences. Most cited: Stang v. Hertz Corporation (80 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. 18 of these were attributed to Watson 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
1970	Stang v. Hertz Corporation· Concurrence†	467 P.2d 14	80
1970	Jewell v. Seidenberg	477 P.2d 296	73
1926	Asplund v. Hannett	249 P. 1074	64
1929	Yeo v. Tweedy	286 P. 970	57
1925	State Trust & Savings Bank v. Hermosa Land & Cattle Co.	240 P. 469	52
1933	State Ex Rel. Hannah v. Armijo· Concurrence	28 P.2d 511	50
1934	Burruss v. B. M. C. Logging Co.	31 P.2d 263	49
1933	Dougherty v. Vidal	21 P.2d 90	48
1935	Wooley v. Shell Petroleum Corp.	45 P.2d 927	44
1924	State v. Armstrong· Separate	243 P. 333	43
1969	State Ex Rel. Overton v. New Mexico State Tax Commission	462 P.2d 613	42
1931	State v. Armijo	2 P.2d 1075	38
1933	Seward v. Bowers· Concurrence	24 P.2d 253	36
1933	Franciscan Hotel Co. v. Albuquerque Hotel Co.· Dissent	24 P.2d 718	34
1933	Temple Lodge No. 6, A.F. A.M. v. Tierney	20 P.2d 280	34

Showing the 15 most-cited of 447 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 Superior Court of California, County of Orange reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was John T. Watson on?: John T. Watson was a Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Orange.

Sources

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18 years on the Superior Court of California, County of Orange. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).