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 2003 / Active

Michael McDonald

Judge, Louisiana Court of Appeal

Michael McDonald is a Judge of the Louisiana Court of Appeal, serving since 2003. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2003 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2003	Louisiana Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, McDonald authored 237 published opinions for the court (2003–2018), plus 20 dissents and 22 concurrences. Most cited: Cressionnie v. Intrepid, Inc. (38 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. 211 of these were attributed to McDonald 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
2004	Cressionnie v. Intrepid, Inc.	879 So. 2d 736	38
2003	Ernest v. Petroleum Service Corp.	868 So. 2d 96	37
2017	Crosstex Energy Servs., LP v. Tex. Brine Co.†	240 So. 3d 932	32
2017	Kasem v. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co.· Dissent†	212 So. 3d 6	30
2017	State v. Scott†	228 So. 3d 207	28
2003	Plaisance v. Davis	868 So. 2d 711	28
2003	Levy v. BAYOU INDUS. MAINTENANCE SERVICES	855 So. 2d 968	28
2014	Maldonado v. Kiewit Louisiana Co.· Dissent†	152 So. 3d 909	27
2010	Suprun v. Louisiana Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance· Concurrence†	40 So. 3d 261	26
2004	State v. Loston	874 So. 2d 197	25
2014	Carter v. Hi Nabor Super Market, LLC· Concurrence†	168 So. 3d 698	24
2017	Quality Environmental Processes, Inc. v. IP Petroleum Co.· Concurrence†	219 So. 3d 349	22
2017	Williams v. Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Co.· Concurrence†	217 So. 3d 421	22
2004	Dyess v. AMERICAN NAT. PROPER. AND CAS. CO.	886 So. 2d 448	22
2003	State v. Smith	868 So. 2d 794	21

Showing the 15 most-cited of 279 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 McDonald on?: Michael McDonald 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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23 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).