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 1931 / Served to 1991

Lester W. Roth

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Lester W. Roth was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1931. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1931–1991 · 60 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1931	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1963	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1964	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Roth authored 613 published opinions for the court (1934–1990), plus 26 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: Karlsen v. American Savings & Loan Ass'n (118 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. 240 of these were attributed to Roth 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
1971	Karlsen v. American Savings & Loan Ass'n	15 Cal. App. 3d 112	118
1971	White v. Cox· Concurrence†	17 Cal. App. 3d 824	55
1969	Warrington v. Charles Pfizer & Co.	274 Cal. App. 2d 564	44
1974	Antique Arts Corp. v. City of Torrance	39 Cal. App. 3d 588	42
1973	People v. Bremmer· Concurrence†	30 Cal. App. 3d 1058	42
1983	Burnett v. National Enquirer, Inc.	144 Cal. App. 3d 991	40
1966	People v. Nieto	247 Cal. App. 2d 364	40
1989	Elster v. Friedman	211 Cal. App. 3d 1439	37
1965	People v. Ford· Dissent†	234 Cal. App. 2d 480	37
1935	Pneucrete Corp. v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co.†	7 Cal. App. 2d 733	37
1988	Kurokawa v. Blum	199 Cal. App. 3d 976	36
1976	Votaw Precision Tool Co. v. Air Canada	60 Cal. App. 3d 52	36
1981	Protestant Episcopal Church v. Barker· Dissent†	115 Cal. App. 3d 599	34
1980	Wynn v. Monterey Club· Concurrence†	111 Cal. App. 3d 789	34
1989	People v. Reyes	212 Cal. App. 3d 852	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 652 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 Lester W. Roth on?: Lester W. Roth was a Presiding 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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60 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).