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 2004 / Served to 2010

Michael Gates

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Michael Gates was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 2004. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2004–2010 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2004	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Gates authored 5 published opinions for the court (2004–2010). Most cited: Reno v. Reno (7 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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
2004	Reno v. Reno	884 So. 2d 462	7
2010	Covenant Trust Co. v. Guardianship of Ihrman	45 So. 3d 499	6
2010	Conlan v. Conlan	43 So. 3d 931	5
2005	USAA Cas. Ins. Co. v. Howell	901 So. 2d 876	5
2010	McNichol v. South Florida Trotting Center, Inc.	44 So. 3d 253	3

Showing the 5 most-cited of 5 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 Michael Gates on?: Michael Gates was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal.

Sources

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

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6 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).