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 1987 / Served to 2017

Paul Turner

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Paul Turner was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1987. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1987–2017 · 30 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1987	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1989	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1990	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Turner authored 428 published opinions for the court (1985–2017), plus 12 dissents and 21 concurrences. Most cited: Union Bank v. Superior Court (213 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. 153 of these were attributed to Turner 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
1995	Union Bank v. Superior Court	31 Cal. App. 4th 573	213
2002	Kids' Universe v. In2labs	116 Cal. Rptr. 2d 158	170
2000	Jonathan Vo v. Las Virgenes Municipal Water District	94 Cal. Rptr. 2d 143	136
2012	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Rodrigo C.†	210 Cal. App. 4th 930	135
1997	People v. Mosley	53 Cal. App. 4th 489	133
2011	People v. Sharret†	191 Cal. App. 4th 859	128
1999	People v. Oganesyan	83 Cal. Rptr. 2d 157	123
2015	People v. Shabazz†	237 Cal. App. 4th 303	122
2004	DIAL 800 v. Fesbinder	12 Cal. Rptr. 3d 711	121
1998	People v. Martinez†	65 Cal. App. 4th 1511	120
1995	Villa v. McFerren	35 Cal. App. 4th 733	118
1996	People v. Acosta	48 Cal. App. 4th 411	112
2002	People v. Mearns	118 Cal. Rptr. 2d 511	108
2010	People v. Woods†	191 Cal. App. 4th 269	107
1998	Mark N. v. Superior Court of L.A. Cty.	60 Cal. App. 4th 996	106

Showing the 15 most-cited of 461 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 Paul Turner on?: Paul Turner was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

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.

30 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).