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 1927 / Served to 1930

Joseph S. Koford

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Joseph S. Koford was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1927. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1927–1930 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1927	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Koford authored 129 published opinions for the court (1920–1980). Most cited: MacDonald v. Reich & Lievre, Inc. (36 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. 1 of these was attributed to Koford 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
1929	MacDonald v. Reich & Lievre, Inc.	281 P. 106	36
1927	Smith v. Hollander	259 P. 958	30
1927	People v. Sheasbey	255 P. 836	29
1929	Irwin v. Newby	282 P. 810	24
1920	Robbins v. Law	292 P. 118	23
1929	O'Neil v. Ross	277 P. 123	21
1929	Lauritsen v. Goldsmith	279 P. 168	20
1928	Sullivan v. Sullivan	271 P. 753	19
1927	In Re Application of Tassey	253 P. 948	18
1930	Richmond v. Moore	284 P. 681	17
1929	Pearce v. Elbe	276 P. 389	16
1928	Sly v. Abbott	264 P. 507	16
1928	Maryland Casualty Co. v. Superior Court	267 P. 169	14
1927	Pigg v. International Indemnity Co.	261 P. 486	14
1927	Snodgrass v. Errengy	261 P. 497	14

Showing the 15 most-cited of 129 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 Joseph S. Koford on?: Joseph S. Koford was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

3 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).