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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Court of Appeals / Joined 1994 / Active

Peter D. O'Connell

Judge, Michigan Court of Appeals

Peter D. O'Connell is a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, serving since 1994. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1994 · 32 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1994	Michigan Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, O'Connell authored 129 published opinions for the court (1995–2018), plus 52 dissents and 42 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Abraham (538 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. 223 of these were attributed to O'Connell 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
2003	People v. Abraham†	662 N.W.2d 836	538
1998	People v. Fike†	577 N.W.2d 903	165
2001	In Re AH†	627 N.W.2d 33	151
2008	Zaremba Equipment, Inc. v. Harco National Insurance· Concurrence†	761 N.W.2d 151	130
1995	Samuel D Begola Services, Inc. v. Wild Bros.†	534 N.W.2d 217	129
2003	Olson v. Olson· Dissent†	671 N.W.2d 64	123
1999	Ardt v. Titan Insurance†	593 N.W.2d 215	118
2007	People v. Pattison†	741 N.W.2d 558	115
2001	People v. Johnson†	631 N.W.2d 1	100
2000	People v. Conat†	605 N.W.2d 49	100
2016	People v. Clark· Dissent†	315 Mich. App. 219	94
2000	Zurcher v. Herveat· Concurrence†	605 N.W.2d 329	94
1999	People v. Griffin†	597 N.W.2d 176	90
2008	Shawl v. SPENCE BROS., INC.· Concurrence†	760 N.W.2d 674	87
2001	Ditmore v. Michalik†	625 N.W.2d 462	85

Showing the 15 most-cited of 223 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 Michigan Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court is Peter D. O'Connell on?: Peter D. O'Connell is a Judge of the Michigan 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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32 years on the Michigan Court of Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).