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 1989 / Served to 1998

Lawrence T. Stevens

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Lawrence T. Stevens was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1989. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1989–1998 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Stevens authored 44 published opinions for the court (1954–2009). Most cited: Salma v. Capon (121 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
2008	Salma v. Capon	74 Cal. Rptr. 3d 873	121
2001	Flores v. Transamerica HomeFirst, Inc.	113 Cal. Rptr. 2d 376	101
2008	CALIFORNIA LOGISTICS, INC. v. State	73 Cal. Rptr. 3d 825	85
1985	People v. Bestelmeyer	166 Cal. App. 3d 520	81
2002	Storek & Storek, Inc. v. Citicorp Real Estate, Inc.	122 Cal. Rptr. 2d 267	66
2005	Westra v. Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Brokerage Co.	28 Cal. Rptr. 3d 752	58
2002	INTERSHOP COMMUNICATIONS, AG v. Superior Court	127 Cal. Rptr. 2d 847	51
2000	Thaler v. Household Finance Corp.	95 Cal. Rptr. 2d 779	50
1999	Safeco Insurance Co. of America v. Superior Court	84 Cal. Rptr. 2d 43	40
2004	Neumann v. Melgar	16 Cal. Rptr. 3d 754	31
1985	People v. Garcia	166 Cal. App. 3d 1056	31
1954	People v. Melton	125 Cal. App. Supp. 2d 901	27
2006	108 HOLDINGS, LTD. v. City of Rohnert Park	38 Cal. Rptr. 3d 589	23
2003	Timney v. Lin	131 Cal. Rptr. 2d 387	23
2005	Coffey v. Superior Court	29 Cal. Rptr. 3d 59	22

Showing the 15 most-cited of 44 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 T. Stevens on?: Lawrence T. Stevens 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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9 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).