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 1961 / Served to 1978

Leonard M. Friedman

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Leonard M. Friedman was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1961. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1914–2004
Tenure: 1961–1978 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1961	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1962	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Friedman authored 331 published opinions for the court (1963–1978), plus 12 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: Sacramento Newspaper Guild, Local 92 v. Sacramento County Board of Supervisors (203 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. 57 of these were attributed to Friedman 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
1968	Sacramento Newspaper Guild, Local 92 v. Sacramento County Board of Supervisors	263 Cal. App. 2d 41	203
1977	County of Inyo v. City of Los Angeles	71 Cal. App. 3d 185	139
1964	Daley v. County of Butte	227 Cal. App. 2d 380	135
1975	G. D. Searle & Co. v. Superior Court†	49 Cal. App. 3d 22	113
1964	Critz v. Farmers Insurance Group	230 Cal. App. 2d 788	111
1964	People v. Hernandez	229 Cal. App. 2d 143	104
1963	Raymond v. Paradise Unified School District	218 Cal. App. 2d 1	99
1972	River Garden Farms, Inc. v. Superior Court	26 Cal. App. 3d 986	98
1974	People v. Johnson	38 Cal. App. 3d 1	86
1970	State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance v. Allstate Insurance	9 Cal. App. 3d 508	83
1977	People v. Ewing	72 Cal. App. 3d 714	78
1964	People v. Chambers	231 Cal. App. 2d 23	76
1966	Ishmael v. Millington	241 Cal. App. 2d 520	75
1974	Black Panther Party v. Kehoe	42 Cal. App. 3d 645	73
1973	People v. Heffington	32 Cal. App. 3d 1	72

Showing the 15 most-cited of 360 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 Leonard M. Friedman on?: Leonard M. Friedman 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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16 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).