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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Massachusetts Appeals Court / Joined 2006 / Served to 2015

Phillip Rapoza

Justice, Massachusetts Appeals Court

Phillip Rapoza was a Justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court, who joined the court in 2006. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2006–2015 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2006	Massachusetts Appeals Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Rapoza authored 28 published opinions for the court (2006–2015), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Chace v. Curran (2,731 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. 29 of these were attributed to Rapoza 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
2008	Chace v. Curran†	71 Mass. App. Ct. 258	2,731
2008	Kanamaru v. Holyoke Mutual Insurance†	72 Mass. App. Ct. 396	20
2007	Slade v. Ormsby†	69 Mass. App. Ct. 542	18
2006	Morgan v. Laboratory Corp. of America†	65 Mass. App. Ct. 816	18
2007	Commonwealth v. Bourgeois†	68 Mass. App. Ct. 433	14
2006	Commonwealth v. Reynolds†	67 Mass. App. Ct. 215	13
2006	Reddish v. Bowen†	66 Mass. App. Ct. 621	13
2007	LeMaitre v. Massachusetts Turnpike Authority†	70 Mass. App. Ct. 634	11
2009	Dixon v. Perry & Slesnick, P.C.†	75 Mass. App. Ct. 271	10
2008	Constantino v. Frechette†	73 Mass. App. Ct. 352	10
2006	Morgan v. Jozus†	67 Mass. App. Ct. 17	10
2011	Sandman v. McGrath†	78 Mass. App. Ct. 800	8
2008	Commonwealth v. Pierre†	72 Mass. App. Ct. 580	8
2009	Commonwealth v. Erickson†	74 Mass. App. Ct. 172	6
2006	Commonwealth v. DePeiza· Dissent†	66 Mass. App. Ct. 398	6

Showing the 15 most-cited of 29 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 Massachusetts Appeals Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Phillip Rapoza on?: Phillip Rapoza was a Justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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