How do judges of the Louisiana Court of Appeal reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Louisiana Court of Appeal / Joined 1996 / Active

Michael J. Sullivan

Judge, Louisiana Court of Appeal

Michael J. Sullivan is a Judge of the Louisiana Court of Appeal, serving since 1996. He previously served on the Appellate Court of Illinois and Court of Appeals of Wisconsin. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1996 · 30 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	Appellate Court of Illinois	–	–
1984	Court of Appeals of Wisconsin	–	–
1996	Louisiana Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Loras College
University of Notre Dame
Spring Hill College
Marquette University
Marquette University

Judicial Record

In our data, Sullivan authored 1,437 published opinions for the court (1952–2009), plus 24 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: Kaiser v. MEPC American Properties, Inc. (218 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. 497 of these were attributed to Sullivan 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
1987	Kaiser v. MEPC American Properties, Inc.	518 N.E.2d 424	218
1988	International Minerals & Chemical Corp. v. Liberty Mutual Insurance	522 N.E.2d 758	119
1984	People v. Hunter	464 N.E.2d 659	104
1985	People v. Steffens	475 N.E.2d 606	97
1983	People v. Winfield	447 N.E.2d 1029	92
1966	Gardner v. Village of Chicago Ridge	219 N.E.2d 147	88
1984	In Re Marriage of Wilder	461 N.E.2d 447	86
1980	Farwell Construction Co. v. Ticktin	405 N.E.2d 1051	79
1979	Crinkley v. Dow Jones & Co.	385 N.E.2d 714	74
1978	ABC Trans National Transport, Inc. v. Aeronautics Forwarders, Inc.	379 N.E.2d 1228	66
1983	National Tea Co. v. Commerce & Industry Insurance	456 N.E.2d 206	61
1980	People v. Sakalas	405 N.E.2d 1121	59
1988	Kubian v. Labinsky	533 N.E.2d 22	57
2004	Phillips v. Diocese of Lafayette	869 So. 2d 313	56
1988	RANDI F. v. High Ridge YMCA	524 N.E.2d 966	56

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,472 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 Louisiana Court of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court is Michael J. Sullivan on?: Michael J. Sullivan is a Judge of the Louisiana 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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30 years on the Louisiana Court of Appeal. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).