How do judges of the Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Florida District Courts of Appeal / Joined 1979 / Served to 1989

Melvin Orfinger

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Melvin Orfinger was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1979–1989 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

CUNY Brooklyn College
Stetson University

Judicial Record

In our data, Orfinger authored 718 published opinions for the court (1980–1989), plus 9 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: Andrews v. State (97 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. 283 of these were attributed to Orfinger 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
1988	Andrews v. State	533 So. 2d 841	97
1983	Snelson v. Snelson	440 So. 2d 477	90
1980	Allen v. Estate of Dutton	384 So. 2d 171	90
1987	Unger v. PUBLISHER ENTRY SERVICE	513 So. 2d 674	75
1982	O'CONNELL v. Walt Disney World Company	413 So. 2d 444	66
1981	State v. Upton	392 So. 2d 1013	60
1986	Yost v. State	489 So. 2d 131	58
1988	Franklin v. State	526 So. 2d 159	48
1984	Brown v. State	454 So. 2d 596	43
1983	Price v. Morgan	436 So. 2d 1116	43
1987	Opperman v. Nationwide Mut. Fire Ins.	515 So. 2d 263	42
1986	West American Ins. Co. v. Yellow Cab Co.	495 So. 2d 204	42
1981	Orlando Executive Park, Inc. v. PDR	402 So. 2d 442	42
1982	Peak v. Peak	411 So. 2d 325	39
1980	Travelers Indemnity Company v. Hill	388 So. 2d 648	39

Showing the 15 most-cited of 740 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 Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Melvin Orfinger on?: Melvin Orfinger was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

10 years on the Florida District Courts of Appeal. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).