How do judges of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia / Joined 1997 / Served to 2008

Larry Starcher

Justice, Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia

Larry Starcher was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, who joined the court in 1997. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1942 · age 84
Tenure: 1997–2008 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1997	Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia	–	–

Education

West Virginia University

Judicial Record

In our data, Starcher authored 177 published opinions for the court (1997–2008), plus 141 dissents and 175 concurrences. Most cited: Mathena v. Haines (775 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. 344 of these were attributed to Starcher 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
2006	Mathena v. Haines	633 S.E.2d 771	775
2004	Carr v. Hancock	607 S.E.2d 803	429
1997	State v. Lucas	496 S.E.2d 221	356
2000	In Re Emily B.· Concurrence†	540 S.E.2d 542	342
1998	Travis v. Alcon Laboratories, Inc.	504 S.E.2d 419	223
2001	Aikens v. Debow· Concurrence†	541 S.E.2d 576	156
2006	State v. Mechling	633 S.E.2d 311	141
1997	Gaither v. City Hospital, Inc.	487 S.E.2d 901	141
2003	Findley v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance· Concurrence†	576 S.E.2d 807	140
2000	State v. Allen· Dissent†	539 S.E.2d 87	129
1998	Murray v. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co.	509 S.E.2d 1	129
1998	Tiernan v. Charleston Area Medical Center, Inc.· Concurrence†	506 S.E.2d 578	116
2003	State Ex Rel. Medical Assurance of West Virginia, Inc. v. Recht· Concurrence†	583 S.E.2d 80	101
2002	State Ex Rel. Dunlap v. Berger	567 S.E.2d 265	100
2000	Meadows v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.· Dissent†	530 S.E.2d 676	94

Showing the 15 most-cited of 493 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 Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Larry Starcher on?: Larry Starcher was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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