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 1980 / Served to 2018

Norman L. Epstein

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Norman L. Epstein was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1980–2018 · 38 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1990	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2004	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Epstein authored 414 published opinions for the court (1980–2018), plus 7 dissents and 10 concurrences. Most cited: Dove Audio, Inc. v. Rosenfeld, Meyer & Susman (182 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. 108 of these were attributed to Epstein 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	Dove Audio, Inc. v. Rosenfeld, Meyer & Susman	47 Cal. App. 4th 777	182
2008	Premier Medical Management Systems, Inc. v. California Insurance Guarantee Ass'n	163 Cal. App. 4th 550	177
1993	People v. Figueroa	20 Cal. App. 4th 65	160
2012	People v. Argeta†	210 Cal. App. 4th 1478	121
2001	People v. Gonzales	104 Cal. Rptr. 2d 247	109
2005	New York Times Co. v. Superior Court	37 Cal. Rptr. 3d 338	101
1999	In Re Brandon C.	84 Cal. Rptr. 2d 505	100
2011	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Ivy B.†	200 Cal. App. 4th 1454	98
1999	People v. Gaston	87 Cal. Rptr. 2d 829	98
1991	Krieger v. Nick Alexander Imports, Inc.	234 Cal. App. 3d 205	94
1997	Oceanside 84, Ltd. v. Fidelity Federal Bank	56 Cal. App. 4th 1441	90
2014	People v. Jones†	223 Cal. App. 4th 995	80
2013	McCoy v. Pacific Maritime Asso.†	216 Cal. App. 4th 283	79
2012	Cole v. Patricia a. Meyer & Associates, APC†	206 Cal. App. 4th 1095	79
1995	Third Story Music, Inc. v. Waits	41 Cal. App. 4th 798	79

Showing the 15 most-cited of 431 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 Norman L. Epstein on?: Norman L. Epstein 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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38 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).