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

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

Colorado Court of Appeals / Joined 1970 / Active

Ralph H. Coyte

Judge, Colorado Court of Appeals

Ralph H. Coyte is a Judge of the Colorado Court of Appeals, serving since 1970. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1970 · 56 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1970	Colorado Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Coyte authored 352 published opinions for the court (1970–1993), plus 15 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Atlantic & Pacific Insurance Co. v. Barnes (256 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. 82 of these were attributed to Coyte 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
1983	Atlantic & Pacific Insurance Co. v. Barnes†	666 P.2d 163	256
1981	People v. Buggs	631 P.2d 1200	177
1980	Travelers Insurance Co. v. Janitell Farms, Inc.	609 P.2d 1116	167
1980	First National Bank in Lamar v. Collins†	616 P.2d 154	58
1976	Butler v. Behaeghe	548 P.2d 934	51
1990	Ferrera v. Nielsen	799 P.2d 458	48
1974	Westland Nursing Home, Inc. v. Benson	517 P.2d 862	38
1979	Allstate Insurance Company v. Robins	597 P.2d 1052	34
1976	Shoemaker v. Mountain States Tel. & Tel. Co.	559 P.2d 721	31
1973	Comtrol, Inc. v. Mountain States Telephone & T. Co.	513 P.2d 1082	31
1982	People v. Saiz	660 P.2d 2	30
1981	People v. Stevens· Dissent†	642 P.2d 39	30
1976	Deterts v. Times Publishing Company	552 P.2d 1033	30
1973	Iowa National Mutual Insurance Co. v. Boatright	516 P.2d 439	29
1976	Ridge Erection Co. v. Mountain States T. & T. Co.	549 P.2d 408	27

Showing the 15 most-cited of 368 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 Colorado Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is Ralph H. Coyte on?: Ralph H. Coyte is a Judge of the Colorado 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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56 years on the Colorado Court of Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).