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 1981 / Served to 2005

Lawrence Donald Kay

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Lawrence Donald Kay was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1981–2005 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

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

Judicial Record

In our data, Kay authored 42 published opinions for the court (2001–2005). Most cited: Navellier v. Sletten (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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
2003	Navellier v. Sletten	131 Cal. Rptr. 2d 201	88
2002	Yu v. Signet Bank/Virginia	126 Cal. Rptr. 2d 516	70
2001	People v. Quintana	108 Cal. Rptr. 2d 235	64
2001	Birschtein v. New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc.	112 Cal. Rptr. 2d 347	58
2002	In Re Providian Credit Card Cases	116 Cal. Rptr. 2d 833	57
2004	Krumme v. Mercury Insurance	20 Cal. Rptr. 3d 485	53
2004	Bowman v. City of Berkeley	18 Cal. Rptr. 3d 814	41
2003	ORRICK HERRINGTON & SUTCLIFFE LLP v. Superior Court	132 Cal. Rptr. 2d 658	38
2002	Personal Watercraft Coalition v. Marin County Board of Supervisors	122 Cal. Rptr. 2d 425	32
2001	Kaczorowski v. Mendocino County Board of Supervisors	106 Cal. Rptr. 2d 14	32
2005	Fontani v. Wells Fargo Investments, LLC	28 Cal. Rptr. 3d 833	31
2004	McKesson HBOC, Inc. v. Superior Court	9 Cal. Rptr. 3d 812	28
2005	Bowman v. City of Berkeley	31 Cal. Rptr. 3d 447	25
2001	People v. Eccleston	107 Cal. Rptr. 2d 440	24
2004	People v. Lewis	12 Cal. Rptr. 3d 1	23

Showing the 15 most-cited of 42 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 Lawrence Donald Kay on?: Lawrence Donald Kay was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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24 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).