How do judges of the Massachusetts Appeals Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Massachusetts Appeals Court / Joined 2001 / Active

Joseph A. Trainor

Justice, Massachusetts Appeals Court

Joseph A. Trainor is a Justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court (6 judges, selected by gubernatorial appointment), serving since 2001. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2001 · 25 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2001	Massachusetts Appeals Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Trainor authored 64 published opinions for the court (2002–2018), plus 6 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Adoption of Rhona (45 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. 74 of these were attributed to Trainor 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
2003	Adoption of Rhona†	57 Mass. App. Ct. 479	45
2012	Barrows v. Wareham Fire District†	82 Mass. App. Ct. 623	36
2004	Cepeda v. Kass†	62 Mass. App. Ct. 732	36
2018	Adoption of Virgil.†	102 N.E.3d 1009	35
2007	Commonwealth v. Ferreira†	70 Mass. App. Ct. 32	27
2005	Jablonski v. Casey†	64 Mass. App. Ct. 744	25
2002	Carroll v. Kartell†	56 Mass. App. Ct. 83	20
2010	Keystone Freight Corp. v. Bartlett Consolidated, Inc.†	77 Mass. App. Ct. 304	17
2008	Robbins v. Krock†	73 Mass. App. Ct. 134	17
2006	Commonwealth v. O'Neil†	67 Mass. App. Ct. 284	13
2006	Commonwealth v. Dasilva†	66 Mass. App. Ct. 556	13
2008	Busalacchi v. McCabe†	71 Mass. App. Ct. 493	11
2007	Ward v. Ward†	70 Mass. App. Ct. 366	10
2009	Healer v. Department of Environmental Protection†	73 Mass. App. Ct. 714	9
2008	Cohen v. State Street Bank & Trust Co.· Concurrence†	72 Mass. App. Ct. 627	9

Showing the 15 most-cited of 75 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 Massachusetts Appeals Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court is Joseph A. Trainor on?: Joseph A. Trainor is a Justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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25 years on the Massachusetts Appeals Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).