How do judges of the Court of Appeals of Tennessee reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Court of Appeals of Tennessee / Joined 1998 / Served to 2014

Patricia J. Cottrell

Judge, Court of Appeals of Tennessee

Patricia J. Cottrell was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Tennessee, who joined the court in 1998. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1998–2014 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1998	Court of Appeals of Tennessee	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Cottrell authored 611 published opinions for the court (1996–2016), plus 1 dissent and 4 concurrences. Most cited: State Ex Rel. Jones v. Looper (184 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. 5 of these were attributed to Cottrell 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
2000	State Ex Rel. Jones v. Looper	86 S.W.3d 189	184
2012	Kathryn A. Duke v. Harold W. Duke, III· Concurrence†	398 S.W.3d 665	149
2007	Watson's Carpet & Floor Coverings, Inc. v. McCormick	247 S.W.3d 169	82
2001	Davis v. the Tennessean	83 S.W.3d 125	80
2000	Earls v. Earls· Concurrence†	42 S.W.3d 877	62
2000	Environmental Abatement, Inc. v. Astrum R.E. Corp.	27 S.W.3d 530	60
2005	State Ex Rel. Moore & Associates, Inc. v. West	246 S.W.3d 569	58
2001	Bryan v. Leach	85 S.W.3d 136	49
2007	Conley v. Life Care Centers of America, Inc.· Concurrence†	236 S.W.3d 713	44
2002	Hawkins v. Tennessee Department of Correction	127 S.W.3d 749	44
2000	Stalsworth v. Grummons	36 S.W.3d 832	42
2003	Pylant v. Spivey	174 S.W.3d 143	39
2002	Summers v. Cherokee Children & Family Services, Inc.	112 S.W.3d 486	33
2001	Vooys v. Turner	49 S.W.3d 318	29
1999	White v. Thompson	11 S.W.3d 913	29

Showing the 15 most-cited of 616 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 Court of Appeals of Tennessee reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Patricia J. Cottrell on?: Patricia J. Cottrell was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Tennessee.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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