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 1997 / Served to 2020

Mary Kathleen Butz

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Mary Kathleen Butz was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1997. They previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Nevada. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1997–2020 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1997	Superior Court of California, County of Nevada	–	–
2001	Superior Court of California, County of Nevada	–	–
2003	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1997	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2001	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2002	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2003	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of California-Davis		1972
University of California-Davis		1981

Judicial Record

In our data, Butz authored 151 published opinions for the court (2004–2019). Most cited: Gilbert v. Sykes (171 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. 82 of these were attributed to Butz 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
2007	Gilbert v. Sykes	53 Cal. Rptr. 3d 752	171
2016	Sacramento County Department of Health & Human Services v. Carrie F.†	3 Cal. App. 5th 283	157
2014	People v. Elder†	227 Cal. App. 4th 1308	123
2011	Collins v. eMachines, Inc.†	202 Cal. App. 4th 249	112
2007	People v. RETANAN	65 Cal. Rptr. 3d 177	111
2012	People v. McCoy†	208 Cal. App. 4th 1333	94
2014	El Dorado County Department of Human Services v. I.R.†	226 Cal. App. 4th 201	90
2011	Kennedy v. Eldridge†	201 Cal. App. 4th 1197	89
2008	In Re Marriage of Carlsson	163 Cal. App. 4th 281	82
2015	People v. Scarbrough†	240 Cal. App. 4th 916	70
2014	People v. Oehmigen†	232 Cal. App. 4th 1	70
2005	Scalf v. D. B. Log Homes, Inc.	27 Cal. Rptr. 3d 826	63
2013	Bushell v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.†	220 Cal. App. 4th 915	62
2013	Fuller v. First Franklin Financial Corp.†	216 Cal. App. 4th 955	61
2006	Oakland Raiders v. Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, Inc.	51 Cal. Rptr. 3d 144	56

Showing the 15 most-cited of 151 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 Mary Kathleen Butz on?: Mary Kathleen Butz 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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23 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).