How do judges of the California Court of Appeal reach the bench?

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

California Court of Appeal / Joined 1984 / Served to 2004

Reuben A. Ortega

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Reuben A. Ortega was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1984. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1984–2004 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1984	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1988	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Ortega authored 129 published opinions for the court (1988–2004), plus 6 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Bialo v. Western Mutual Insurance (71 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. 21 of these were attributed to Ortega 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
2001	Bialo v. Western Mutual Insurance	115 Cal. Rptr. 2d 3	71
1993	Szadolci v. Hollywood Park Operating Co.	14 Cal. App. 4th 16	64
1992	Clark v. Claremont University Center & Graduate School	6 Cal. App. 4th 639	62
1998	Loth v. Truck-A-Way Corp.	60 Cal. App. 4th 757	44
1998	People v. JEFELO	63 Cal. App. 4th 1314	38
1991	California Aviation, Inc. v. Leeds	233 Cal. App. 3d 724	37
2001	Jurcoane v. Superior Court	113 Cal. Rptr. 2d 483	35
1999	Herman v. Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority†	71 Cal. App. 4th 819	35
2004	Yuzon v. Collins	10 Cal. Rptr. 3d 18	34
2000	KNB ENTERPRISES v. Matthews	92 Cal. Rptr. 2d 713	34
2003	In Re Smith· Dissent†	134 Cal. Rptr. 2d 781	31
2000	In Re Arlyne A.	102 Cal. Rptr. 2d 109	29
1996	Naftzger v. American Numismatic Society	42 Cal. App. 4th 421	28
1988	People v. Lugashi	205 Cal. App. 3d 632	28
1990	Billings v. Health Plan of America	225 Cal. App. 3d 250	27

Showing the 15 most-cited of 139 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 California Court of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Reuben A. Ortega on?: Reuben A. Ortega was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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