How do judges of the Montana Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 2001 / Served to 2016

Patricia O'Brien Cotter

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Patricia O'Brien Cotter was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2001. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1950 · age 76
Tenure: 2001–2016 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2001	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Cotter authored 674 published opinions for the court (2001–2016), plus 98 dissents and 81 concurrences. Most cited: International Ass'n of Firefighters, Local No. 8 v. Eighth Judicial District Court (333 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. 468 of these were attributed to Cotter 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
2002	International Ass'n of Firefighters, Local No. 8 v. Eighth Judicial District Court· Concurrence†	2002 MT 17	333
2001	State v. Van Kirk	2001 MT 184	213
2004	Hawkins v. Montana State Prison†	2004 MT 289	168
2008	State v. Ashby	2008 MT 83	114
2005	State v. Warclub	2005 MT 149	112
2006	Baltrusch v. Baltrusch· Concurrence†	2006 MT 51	107
2013	Pilgeram v. Greenpoint Mortgage Funding, Inc.· Dissent†	2013 MT 354	103
2002	Kiely Construction, L.L.C. v. City of Red Lodge Ex Rel. Red Lodge City Council	2002 MT 241	96
2003	State v. Martinez· Dissent†	2003 MT 65	92
2009	Jacobsen v. Allstate Insurance· Concurrence†	2009 MT 248	88
2007	Essex Insurance v. Moose's Saloon, Inc.· Concurrence†	2007 MT 202	88
2001	In re E.K.†	307 Mont. 328	81
2003	Plath v. Schonrock	2003 MT 21	79
2002	State v. Good· Concurrence†	2002 MT 59	75
2008	State v. Hamper· Concurrence†	2008 MT 296	73

Showing the 15 most-cited of 853 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 Montana Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Patricia O'Brien Cotter on?: Patricia O'Brien Cotter was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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15 years on the Montana Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).