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 1980 / Served to 1988

Leon Thompson

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Leon Thompson was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1980–1988 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Thompson authored 92 published opinions for the court (1980–1988), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Eastwood v. Superior Court (98 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. 14 of these were attributed to Thompson 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
1983	Eastwood v. Superior Court	149 Cal. App. 3d 409	98
1987	Insurance Co. of the West v. Haralambos Beverage Co.†	195 Cal. App. 3d 1308	93
1983	Martin v. Kehl	145 Cal. App. 3d 228	68
1986	Hayman v. Block· Dissent†	176 Cal. App. 3d 629	55
1987	People v. Burrell-Hart	192 Cal. App. 3d 593	49
1986	Hennefer v. Butcher	182 Cal. App. 3d 492	48
1983	Curran v. Mount Diablo Council of Boy Scouts of America	147 Cal. App. 3d 712	47
1980	Sorensen v. Allred†	112 Cal. App. 3d 717	42
1984	Torres v. Union Pacific Railroad	157 Cal. App. 3d 499	41
1984	Hochheiser v. Superior Court	161 Cal. App. 3d 777	39
1985	Casa De Valley View Owner's Assn. v. Stevenson	167 Cal. App. 3d 1182	38
1985	Von Batsch v. American District Telegraph Co.	175 Cal. App. 3d 1111	37
1985	Nelson v. Flintkote Co.	172 Cal. App. 3d 727	36
1983	Underwriters Insurance v. Purdie	145 Cal. App. 3d 57	36
1983	Foster v. Civil Service Commission	142 Cal. App. 3d 444	36

Showing the 15 most-cited of 93 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 Leon Thompson on?: Leon Thompson 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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8 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).