How do judges of the Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?

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

Florida District Courts of Appeal / Joined 1958 / Served to 1966

Orvil Dayton

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Orvil Dayton was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 1958. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1958–1966 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1958	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Dayton authored 5 published opinions for the court (1957–1972). Most cited: Harrington v. State (42 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. 2 of these were attributed to Dayton 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
1959	Harrington v. State	110 So. 2d 495	42
1957	Marsh v. Sarasota County	97 So. 2d 312	21
1959	Garrett v. Oak Hall Club†	112 So. 2d 603	4
1958	Strozier v. Strozier†	107 So. 2d 134	4
1972	Exchange Nat. Bank of Tampa v. Alturas Packing Co.	269 So. 2d 733	3

Showing the 5 most-cited of 5 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 Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Orvil Dayton on?: Orvil Dayton was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal.

Sources

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

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8 years on the Florida District Courts of Appeal. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).