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 1977 / Served to 1997

Keith F. Sparks

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Keith F. Sparks was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1933 · age 93
Tenure: 1977–1997 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1981	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Sparks authored 199 published opinions for the court (1979–1998), plus 4 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Beck Development Co. v. Southern Pacific Transportation Co. (215 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. 206 of these were attributed to Sparks 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
1996	Beck Development Co. v. Southern Pacific Transportation Co.†	44 Cal. App. 4th 1160	215
1993	People v. Nguyen†	21 Cal. App. 4th 518	201
1996	People v. Honig†	48 Cal. App. 4th 289	137
1987	Pacific Gas & Electric Co. v. Zuckerman†	189 Cal. App. 3d 1113	131
1992	People v. Woods· Dissent†	8 Cal. App. 4th 1570	104
1996	People v. Schmies†	44 Cal. App. 4th 38	92
1985	Allen v. Toten†	172 Cal. App. 3d 1079	92
1985	People v. Gordon†	165 Cal. App. 3d 839	89
1989	Leonardini v. Shell Oil Co.†	216 Cal. App. 3d 547	88
1982	Williams v. Taylor†	129 Cal. App. 3d 745	82
1991	Department of Parks & Recreation v. State Personnel Board†	233 Cal. App. 3d 813	79
1985	People v. Turner†	171 Cal. App. 3d 116	79
1998	Schabarum v. California Legislature	60 Cal. App. 4th 1205	77
1996	Conrad v. Bank of America†	45 Cal. App. 4th 133	77
1986	People v. Reinertson†	178 Cal. App. 3d 320	77

Showing the 15 most-cited of 207 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 Keith F. Sparks on?: Keith F. Sparks was an Associate 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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20 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).