How do judges of the Montana Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 2010 / Former Justice

Mike Wheat

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Mike Wheat was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2010. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2010 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2010	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Wheat authored 225 published opinions for the court (2010–2017), plus 28 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: Pilgeram v. Greenpoint Mortgage Funding, Inc. (103 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. 206 of these were attributed to Wheat 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
2013	Pilgeram v. Greenpoint Mortgage Funding, Inc.†	2013 MT 354	103
2014	Tidyman's Manangement Services Inc. v. Davis†	2014 MT 205	71
2016	Kelly v. Teton Prairie LLC†	2016 MT 179	47
2013	Newman v. Scottsdale Insurance· Dissent†	2013 MT 125	43
2011	Diaz v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield†	2011 MT 322	42
2010	Peterson v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance· Concurrence†	2010 MT 187	40
2013	In re T.S.†	372 Mont. 79	38
2014	Skelton Ranch, Inc. v. Pondera County Canal & Reservoir Co.†	2014 MT 167	37
2014	State v. Reim†	2014 MT 108	37
2016	Montana Cannabis Industry Ass'n v. State· Dissent†	2016 MT 44	35
2011	Estate of Willson v. Addison	2011 MT 179	35
2013	In re E.Z.C.†	370 Mont. 116	33
2011	City of Missoula v. Moore	2011 MT 61	33
2014	State v. Crider†	2014 MT 139	32
2011	Walters v. FLATHEAD CONCRETE PRODUCTS, INC.· Dissent†	2011 MT 45	32

Showing the 15 most-cited of 262 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 Montana Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Mike Wheat on?: Mike Wheat was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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16 years on the Montana Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).