How do judges of the California Court of Appeal reach the bench?

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

California Court of Appeal / Joined 1990 / Served to 1993

Patti S. Kitching

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Patti S. Kitching was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1990. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1990–1993 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1990	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Kitching authored 105 published opinions for the court (1993–2010). Most cited: Rakestraw v. California Physicians' Service (284 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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
2000	Rakestraw v. California Physicians' Service	96 Cal. Rptr. 2d 354	284
1995	People v. Allen	33 Cal. App. 4th 1149	157
2000	Sessions Payroll Management, Inc. v. Noble Construction Co.	101 Cal. Rptr. 2d 127	101
1998	Rosario E. Sobremonte v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County	61 Cal. App. 4th 980	91
1998	Friedland v. City of Long Beach	62 Cal. App. 4th 835	75
1994	Eng. & Architects Assn. v. Community Dev. Dept. of City of Los Angeles	30 Cal. App. 4th 644	73
2004	Lockheed Litigation Cases	10 Cal. Rptr. 3d 34	59
2000	Lang v. Hochman	92 Cal. Rptr. 2d 322	58
2009	Gordon v. Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.	170 Cal. App. 4th 1103	54
2008	Garibay v. Hemmat	74 Cal. Rptr. 3d 715	54
1993	Virginia G. v. ABC Unified School District	15 Cal. App. 4th 1848	50
2001	Chavez v. Whirlpool Corp.	113 Cal. Rptr. 2d 175	49
2002	Griffiths v. Superior Court	117 Cal. Rptr. 2d 445	47
1996	Bancomer, S. A. v. Superior Court	44 Cal. App. 4th 1450	46
1999	Wilkins v. National Broadcasting Co.	84 Cal. Rptr. 2d 329	42

Showing the 15 most-cited of 105 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 California Court of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Patti S. Kitching on?: Patti S. Kitching was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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