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

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

Indiana Court of Appeals / Joined 1968 / Served to 2007

Patrick D. Sullivan

Judge, Indiana Court of Appeals

Patrick D. Sullivan was a Judge of the Indiana Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1968. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1968–2007 · 39 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1968	Indiana Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Sullivan authored 1,181 published opinions for the court (1969–2011), plus 191 dissents and 393 concurrences. Most cited: Thakkar v. State (358 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. 792 of these were attributed to Sullivan 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
1994	Thakkar v. State	644 N.E.2d 609	358
2004	Evans v. State	809 N.E.2d 338	169
2006	Rowlett v. Vanderburgh County Office of Family & Children	841 N.E.2d 615	138
1976	City of Evansville v. Southern Indiana Gas & Electric Co.· Concurrence†	339 N.E.2d 562	108
2003	Kien v. State	782 N.E.2d 398	105
1977	Bassett v. Glock	368 N.E.2d 18	105
1978	Kroger Co. v. Haun	379 N.E.2d 1004	103
2002	Loomis v. Ameritech Corp.· Concurrence†	764 N.E.2d 658	98
1983	Briggs v. Clinton County Bank & Trust Co. of Frankfort	452 N.E.2d 989	93
1976	L. S. Ayres & Co. Et Al. v. IPALCO Et Al.· Concurrence†	351 N.E.2d 814	85
1976	Weenig v. Wood	349 N.E.2d 235	83
1986	Ember v. B.F.D., Inc.· Dissent†	490 N.E.2d 764	81
1971	Mamula v. Ford Motor Company· Dissent†	275 N.E.2d 849	81
1980	Little v. State	413 N.E.2d 639	80
1975	Winston v. State	332 N.E.2d 229	78

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,769 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 Indiana Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Patrick D. Sullivan on?: Patrick D. Sullivan was a Judge of the Indiana Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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