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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Court of Appeals of Washington / Joined 2014 / Active

Rich Melnick

Judge, Court of Appeals of Washington

Rich Melnick is a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Washington (36 judges, selected by nonpartisan election), serving since 2014. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2014 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2014	Court of Appeals of Washington	–	–

Education

Lewis & Clark College

Judicial Record

In our data, Melnick authored 73 published opinions for the court (2014–2019), plus 4 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Mathers (88 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 Melnick 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
2016	State v. Mathers†	193 Wash. App. 913	88
2015	Boyd v. State†	187 Wash. App. 1	43
2014	Lee v. Metro Parks Tacoma· Concurrence†	183 Wash. App. 961	34
2016	In Re the Estate of Mower· Dissent†	193 Wash. App. 706	33
2017	Larry Riley v. Iron Gate Self Storage†	198 Wash. App. 692	28
2014	State v. Vance†	184 Wash. App. 902	27
2017	Darlington Ofuasia Et Al., Appellants, v. Dana William Smurr Et Al., Respondents†	198 Wash. App. 133	26
2014	State v. Johnson†	184 Wash. App. 777	26
2016	State Of Washington v. Kevin Lee Estes†	193 Wash. App. 479	25
2015	Union Bank, NA v. Vanderhoek Associates, LLC†	191 Wash. App. 836	22
2014	State v. Webb†	183 Wash. App. 242	20
2019	State v. Kitt†	442 P.3d 1280	17
2017	State Of Washington v. Martha E. Froehlich· Dissent†	197 Wash. App. 831	17
2016	State Of Washington, V Guadalupe Solis Diaz· Concurrence†	194 Wash. App. 129	17
2015	State v. Englund†	186 Wash. App. 444	17

Showing the 15 most-cited of 82 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 Court of Appeals of Washington reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court is Rich Melnick on?: Rich Melnick is a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Washington.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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