How do judges of the Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?

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

Florida District Courts of Appeal / Joined 1996 / Active

Philip J. Padovano

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Philip J. Padovano is a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, serving since 1996. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1947 · age 79
Tenure: Since 1996 · 30 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1996	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

Florida State University
Stetson University

Judicial Record

In our data, Padovano authored 182 published opinions for the court (1994–2015), plus 12 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: Powertel, Inc. v. Bexley (134 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. 74 of these were attributed to Padovano 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
1999	Powertel, Inc. v. Bexley	743 So. 2d 570	134
1999	Management Computer v. Perry Const.	743 So. 2d 627	106
2000	Davis v. Powertel, Inc.	776 So. 2d 971	105
1997	Sheley v. FLORIDA PAROLE COM'N	703 So. 2d 1202	104
2001	Jones v. State	790 So. 2d 1194	87
2004	Lopez v. State	888 So. 2d 693	74
1997	Sarkis v. Pafford Oil Co., Inc.	697 So. 2d 524	52
2000	SW Fla. Water Mgmt. Dist. v. Save the Manatee Club, Inc.	773 So. 2d 594	45
2004	Aguila v. Hilton, Inc.	878 So. 2d 392	35
1997	Rhodes v. State	704 So. 2d 1080	31
2000	Valdes v. State	765 So. 2d 774	30
2008	Simmons v. Simmons	979 So. 2d 1063	27
2008	Caldwell v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.	980 So. 2d 1226	25
2002	Fire & Cas. Ins. Co. of Conn. v. Sealey	810 So. 2d 988	25
1999	Taylor v. State	740 So. 2d 89	25

Showing the 15 most-cited of 210 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 Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is Philip J. Padovano on?: Philip J. Padovano is a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal.

Sources

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

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