How do judges of the New York Appellate Division reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Appellate Division / Joined 1969 / Served to 1983

Michael E. Sweeney

Justice, New York Appellate Division

Michael E. Sweeney was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division, who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1915–2006
Tenure: 1969–1983 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	New York Appellate Division	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Sweeney authored 256 published opinions for the court (1969–1983), plus 25 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Fonda v. Paulsen (62 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. 288 of these were attributed to Sweeney 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
1975	Fonda v. Paulsen· Dissent†	46 A.D.2d 540	62
1974	Rocha v. State†	45 A.D.2d 633	45
1977	In re Scopes†	59 A.D.2d 203	35
1983	Augsbury Corp. v. Petrokey Corp.†	97 A.D.2d 173	34
1978	Drago v. Buonagurio†	61 A.D.2d 282	30
1975	Sirles v. Cordary· Dissent†	49 A.D.2d 330	28
1980	Lattanzi v. State†	74 A.D.2d 378	26
1979	Cunningham v. State†	71 A.D.2d 181	26
1978	Osborn v. Kelley†	61 A.D.2d 367	25
1983	Rush v. Sears, Roebuck & Co.· Concurrence†	92 A.D.2d 1072	22
1978	Malkin v. Tully†	65 A.D.2d 228	21
1975	Bailey v. Diamond International Corp.†	47 A.D.2d 363	19
1970	Koupash v. Grand Union Co.†	34 A.D.2d 695	17
1980	McMahon v. Butler†	73 A.D.2d 197	16
1975	Claim of Zanotti v. New York Telephone Co.· Dissent†	48 A.D.2d 192	16

Showing the 15 most-cited of 289 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 New York Appellate Division reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Michael E. Sweeney on?: Michael E. Sweeney was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division.

Sources

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

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14 years on the New York Appellate Division. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).