How do judges of the New York Appellate Division reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Appellate Division / Joined 1979 / Served to 1986

Leon D. Lazer

Justice, New York Appellate Division

Leon D. Lazer was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division, who joined the court in 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1979–1986 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	New York Appellate Division	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Lazer authored 81 published opinions for the court (1979–1986), plus 41 dissents and 41 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Suitte (10,344 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. 162 of these were attributed to Lazer 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
1982	People v. Suitte†	90 A.D.2d 80	10,344
1985	Nicastro v. Park†	113 A.D.2d 129	1,654
1983	Heffler v. State· Dissent†	96 A.D.2d 926	253
1983	Polish National Alliance of Brooklyn, U.S.A. v. White Eagle Hall Co.†	98 A.D.2d 400	157
1986	Marine Midland Bank v. Murkoff†	120 A.D.2d 122	129
1980	Friar v. Vanguard Holding Corp.†	78 A.D.2d 83	122
1982	Clearview Concrete Products Corp. v. S. Charles Gherardi, Inc.†	88 A.D.2d 461	101
1983	Baratta v. Kozlowski†	94 A.D.2d 454	91
1980	Loeb v. Teitelbaum†	77 A.D.2d 92	88
1980	Beacon Terminal Corp. v. Chemprene, Inc.†	75 A.D.2d 350	87
1981	O'Boyle v. Avis Rent-A-Car System, Inc.†	78 A.D.2d 431	86
1983	Schmidt v. Magnetic Head Corp.· Concurrence†	97 A.D.2d 151	79
1985	Gabrelian v. Gabrelian· Concurrence†	108 A.D.2d 445	72
1983	Mann Theatres Corp. of California v. Mid-Island Shopping Plaza Co.†	94 A.D.2d 466	64
1982	Glen Head — Glenwood Landing Civic Council, Inc. v. Town of Oyster Bay†	88 A.D.2d 484	62

Showing the 15 most-cited of 163 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 New York Appellate Division reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Leon D. Lazer on?: Leon D. Lazer was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division.

Sources

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

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7 years on the New York Appellate Division. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).