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 1979 / Served to 1999

Morio L. Fukuto

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Morio L. Fukuto was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1979–1999 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1986	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Fukuto authored 90 published opinions for the court (1987–1998), plus 2 concurrences. Most cited: Roddenberry v. Roddenberry (207 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. 7 of these were attributed to Fukuto 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
1996	Roddenberry v. Roddenberry· Concurrence†	44 Cal. App. 4th 634	207
1990	Loyola Marymount University v. Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co.	219 Cal. App. 3d 1217	58
1997	In Re Jamika W.	54 Cal. App. 4th 1446	50
1993	Binkley v. City of Long Beach	16 Cal. App. 4th 1795	48
1997	Vu v. California Commerce Club, Inc.	58 Cal. App. 4th 229	42
1994	Moallem v. Coldwell Banker Commercial Group, Inc.	25 Cal. App. 4th 1827	40
1987	Krikorian v. Barry	196 Cal. App. 3d 1211	40
1991	Bolanos v. Khalatian	231 Cal. App. 3d 1586	39
1995	Fort Mojave Indian Tribe v. California Department of Health Services	38 Cal. App. 4th 1574	32
1987	People v. Martinez	194 Cal. App. 3d 15	32
1997	People v. Gill	60 Cal. App. 4th 743	30
1996	Shell Oil Co. v. National Union Fire Insurance	44 Cal. App. 4th 1633	30
1993	Victa v. Merle Norman Cosmetics, Inc.	19 Cal. App. 4th 454	30
1994	Hand v. Farmers Insurance Exchange	23 Cal. App. 4th 1847	29
1993	Security Officers Service, Inc. v. State Compensation Insurance Fund	17 Cal. App. 4th 887	29

Showing the 15 most-cited of 92 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 Morio L. Fukuto on?: Morio L. Fukuto was an Associate 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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19 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).