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

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

California Court of Appeal / Joined 1949 / Served to 2002

Mildred L. Lillie

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Mildred L. Lillie was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1949. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1949–2002 · 53 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1949	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1958	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1984	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Lillie authored 1,201 published opinions for the court (1958–2003), plus 8 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Goodley v. Wank & Wank, Inc. (151 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. 171 of these were attributed to Lillie 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
1976	Goodley v. Wank & Wank, Inc.	62 Cal. App. 3d 389	151
1997	Prilliman v. United Air Lines, Inc.	53 Cal. App. 4th 935	139
1959	Agnew v. Parks	172 Cal. App. 2d 756	114
1986	Pulver v. Avco Financial Services	182 Cal. App. 3d 622	110
2002	People v. Robert H.	117 Cal. Rptr. 2d 899	97
1999	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Daniel R.†	75 Cal. App. 4th 1093	82
1989	Beck v. American Health Group International, Inc.	211 Cal. App. 3d 1555	78
1995	Marshall v. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher	37 Cal. App. 4th 1397	75
1991	Aragon-Haas v. Family Security Insurance Services	231 Cal. App. 3d 232	72
1998	Generale Bank Nederland, N v. v. Eyes of Beholder Ltd.	61 Cal. App. 4th 1384	69
1978	Minasian v. Sapse	80 Cal. App. 3d 823	66
1971	Philbin v. Philbin	19 Cal. App. 3d 115	65
1959	People v. Walker	170 Cal. App. 2d 159	64
1985	Selleck v. Globe International, Inc.	166 Cal. App. 3d 1123	63
1998	Janis v. California State Lottery Commission	80 Cal. Rptr. 2d 549	62

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,217 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 California Court of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Mildred L. Lillie on?: Mildred L. Lillie was a Presiding Justice of the California 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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53 years on the California Court of Appeal. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).