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 1983 / Served to 1991

Ralph Wilson Nimmons Jr.

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Ralph Wilson Nimmons Jr. was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal (102 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1983. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1938–2003
Tenure: 1983–1991 · 8 yrs
Education: University of Florida 1960

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of Florida

B.A.

1960

Judicial Record

In our data, Nimmons authored 221 published opinions for the court (1983–1991), plus 11 dissents and 21 concurrences. Most cited: Patterson v. State (26 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. 254 of these were attributed to Nimmons 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
1987	Patterson v. State†	512 So. 2d 1109	26
1991	D.M. v. State†	580 So. 2d 634	7
1986	Peake v. State†	490 So. 2d 1325	7
1984	Waite v. Wellington Boats, Inc.†	459 So. 2d 425	7
1990	Dioneff v. Department of Highway Safety†	571 So. 2d 1377	6
1989	In the Interest of J.S. v. State†	552 So. 2d 327	6
1989	Wright v. State†	547 So. 2d 258	6
1989	Interest of M.M. v. State· Dissent†	547 So. 2d 139	6
1988	Ealey v. Holt†	523 So. 2d 173	6
1990	Q.E.G. v. State†	569 So. 2d 1313	5
1990	Freeman v. Sanders†	562 So. 2d 834	5
1989	Havis v. State· Concurrence†	555 So. 2d 417	5
1989	Escambia County Board of County Commissioners v. Phipps· Dissent†	553 So. 2d 269	5
1989	Perry v. Ridgecrest International†	548 So. 2d 826	5
1987	Thompson v. Dugger†	509 So. 2d 391	5

Showing the 15 most-cited of 254 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 was Ralph Wilson Nimmons Jr. on?: Ralph Wilson Nimmons Jr. was 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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8 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).