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 2000 / Served to 2020

Laurie D. Zelon

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Laurie D. Zelon was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 2000. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2000–2020 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2003	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Zelon authored 117 published opinions for the court (2004–2019), plus 2 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: People v. Dueñas (1,317 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. 70 of these were attributed to Zelon 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
2019	People v. Dueñas†	242 Cal. Rptr. 3d 268	1,317
2012	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Kimberly G.†	203 Cal. App. 4th 614	283
2012	Klein v. Chevron U.S.A., Inc.†	202 Cal. App. 4th 1342	163
2010	Arce v. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc.	181 Cal. App. 4th 471	136
2017	L. A. Cnty. Dep't of Children & Family Servs. v. Veronica C. (In re Joaquin C.)†	222 Cal. Rptr. 3d 902	103
2013	Multani v. Witkin & Neal†	215 Cal. App. 4th 1428	81
2013	Hunter v. CBS Broadcasting Inc.†	221 Cal. App. 4th 1510	80
2006	Aron v. U-Haul Co. of California	49 Cal. Rptr. 3d 555	79
2014	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Ashley L.†	232 Cal. App. 4th 81	73
2007	Belaire-West Landscape, Inc. v. Superior Court	57 Cal. Rptr. 3d 197	73
2017	People v. Gallardo†	226 Cal. Rptr. 3d 699	72
2015	Noe v. Superior Court†	237 Cal. App. 4th 316	72
2016	Randall v. Mousseau†	2 Cal. App. 5th 929	61
2019	Brown v. Goldstein†	246 Cal. Rptr. 3d 161	60
2008	People v. Rish	163 Cal. App. 4th 1370	60

Showing the 15 most-cited of 120 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 Laurie D. Zelon on?: Laurie D. Zelon 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).