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 1959 / Served to 1962

Matthew O. Tobriner

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Matthew O. Tobriner was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1959. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1959–1962 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1959	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Tobriner authored 143 published opinions for the court (1959–1962), plus 1 concurrence. Most cited: Neal v. State Farm Insurance Companies (119 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. 15 of these were attributed to Tobriner 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
1961	Neal v. State Farm Insurance Companies	188 Cal. App. 2d 690	119
1961	Clevenger v. Clevenger	189 Cal. App. 2d 658	111
1959	Davis v. Superior Court	175 Cal. App. 2d 8	55
1961	City of Campbell v. Mosk	197 Cal. App. 2d 640	48
1959	Noe v. Travelers Insurance	172 Cal. App. 2d 731	42
1960	People v. Horn	187 Cal. App. 2d 68	41
1962	American Automobile Insurance v. Transport Indemnity Co.	200 Cal. App. 2d 543	38
1959	People v. Otis	344 P.2d 342	38
1962	Brady v. Superior Court	200 Cal. App. 2d 69	37
1961	People v. Prieto	191 Cal. App. 2d 62	37
1961	Floresta, Inc. v. City Council	190 Cal. App. 2d 599	36
1961	Zimmerman v. Bank of America National Trust & Savings Ass'n	191 Cal. App. 2d 55	34
1962	Fletcher v. Porter	203 Cal. App. 2d 313	33
1962	Globe Indemnity Co. v. Universal Underwriters Insurance	201 Cal. App. 2d 9	33
1961	People v. Burch	196 Cal. App. 2d 754	32

Showing the 15 most-cited of 144 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 Matthew O. Tobriner on?: Matthew O. Tobriner was a 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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3 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).