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 1991 / Served to 1994

Kathryn M. Werdegar

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Kathryn M. Werdegar was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1991. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1991–1994 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1991	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Werdegar authored 23 published opinions for the court (1992–1994), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Kwan v. Mercedes-Benz of North America, Inc. (88 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 Werdegar 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
1994	Kwan v. Mercedes-Benz of North America, Inc.	23 Cal. App. 4th 174	88
1994	Hoch v. Allied-Signal, Inc.	24 Cal. App. 4th 48	69
1993	People v. Avina	14 Cal. App. 4th 1303	63
1992	Peter Culley & Associates v. Superior Court	10 Cal. App. 4th 1484	59
1994	People v. Curtin	22 Cal. App. 4th 528	37
1993	Chadwick v. Fire Insurance Exchange	17 Cal. App. 4th 1112	35
1993	People v. Babich	14 Cal. App. 4th 801	30
1993	People v. Mouton	15 Cal. App. 4th 1313	26
1993	People v. Felix	14 Cal. App. 4th 997	21
1992	People v. Elguera	8 Cal. App. 4th 1214	21
1992	Oswald MacHine & Equipment, Inc. v. Yip	10 Cal. App. 4th 1238	20
1992	Yordamlis v. Zolin· Dissent†	11 Cal. App. 4th 655	19
1994	Williamson v. Plant Insulation Co.	23 Cal. App. 4th 1406	18
1993	Armondo v. Department of Motor Vehicles	15 Cal. App. 4th 1174	14
1992	People v. Balbuena	11 Cal. App. 4th 1136	11

Showing the 15 most-cited of 24 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 Kathryn M. Werdegar on?: Kathryn M. Werdegar 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

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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).