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 1948 / Served to 1961

Paul Vallée

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Paul Vallée was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1948. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1948–1961 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1948	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Vallée authored 90 published opinions for the court (1948–1961). Most cited: American Automobile Insurance v. American Fidelity & Casualty Company of Richmond (35 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. 90 of these were attributed to Vallée 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
1951	American Automobile Insurance v. American Fidelity & Casualty Company of Richmond†	106 Cal. App. 2d 630	35
1949	Milton Kauffman, Inc. v. Superior Court†	94 Cal. App. 2d 8	22
1955	Security-First National Bank v. Henigbaum†	135 Cal. App. 2d 343	17
1948	Citizens National Trust & Savings Bank v. Hawkins†	87 Cal. App. 2d 535	16
1949	Hamilton v. Hamilton†	94 Cal. App. 2d 293	15
1949	Spencer v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Co.†	92 Cal. App. 2d 490	13
1951	Oppenheimer v. City of Los Angeles†	104 Cal. App. 2d 551	10
1949	Export Leaf Tobacco Co. v. County of Los Angeles†	89 Cal. App. 2d 909	8
1956	Wilbur v. Office of the City Clerk†	143 Cal. App. 2d 636	7
1948	Travis v. Travis†	89 Cal. App. 2d 291	7
1955	Los Angeles Local Joint Executive Board of Culinary Workers & Bartenders v. Stan's Drive-Ins, Inc.†	136 Cal. App. 2d 95	4
1955	Warner v. Warner†	135 Cal. App. 2d 302	4
1948	Cohen v. Kaufman†	89 Cal. App. 2d 463	4
1954	People v. Ramos†	125 Cal. App. 2d 383	3
1951	Esquivel v. Raney†	106 Cal. App. 2d 162	3

Showing the 15 most-cited of 90 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 Vallée on?: Paul Vallée was a 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

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13 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).