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 1944 / Served to 1952

O Byron Brewster

Justice, New York Appellate Division

O Byron Brewster was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division, who joined the court in 1944. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1944–1952 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1944	New York Appellate Division	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Brewster authored 74 published opinions for the court (1944–1952), plus 42 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Boyce Motor Lines, Inc. v. State (74 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. 123 of these were attributed to Brewster 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
1952	Boyce Motor Lines, Inc. v. State†	280 A.D. 693	74
1945	Douglas v. State· Dissent†	269 A.D. 521	35
1949	People ex rel. Clarkson v. Haggett†	274 A.D. 732	29
1948	Herlihy v. Phoenix Assurance Co.†	274 A.D. 342	21
1945	McCarthy v. City of Saratoga Springs· Dissent†	269 A.D. 469	19
1944	In re the Accounting of the Poughkeepsie Trust Co.†	268 A.D. 74	18
1952	Quigley v. State†	281 A.D. 185	16
1951	Rugg v. State· Dissent†	278 A.D. 216	16
1944	Benvenga v. La Guardia· Concurrence†	268 A.D. 566	12
1952	In re the Estate of Spring†	280 A.D. 642	11
1948	Walcott v. Fisher†	274 A.D. 339	10
1945	Claim of Bauss v. Consolidated Chimney Co.†	270 A.D. 70	10
1945	In re Grenfell· Concurrence†	269 A.D. 600	10
1944	Russell v. State†	268 A.D. 585	10
1944	In re the Claim of Skutnik†	268 A.D. 357	9

Showing the 15 most-cited of 123 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 O Byron Brewster on?: O Byron Brewster was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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8 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).