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 1994 / Served to 2017

Richard D. Aldrich

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Richard D. Aldrich was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1994. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Ventura. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1994–2017 · 22 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1991	Superior Court of California, County of Ventura	–	–
1994	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Loyola Marymount University		1960
University of California-Los Angeles		1963

Judicial Record

In our data, Aldrich authored 243 published opinions for the court (1994–2017), plus 2 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Jones (323 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. 81 of these were attributed to Aldrich 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
2002	People v. Jones	127 Cal. Rptr. 2d 319	323
1996	Church of Scientology v. Wollersheim	42 Cal. App. 4th 628	209
2002	People v. Duran	119 Cal. Rptr. 2d 272	194
2004	HMS Capital, Inc. v. Lawyers Title Co.	12 Cal. Rptr. 3d 786	186
1999	Hanson v. Lucky Stores, Inc.	87 Cal. Rptr. 2d 487	186
2001	In Re Anthony W.	104 Cal. Rptr. 2d 422	184
1996	In Re Ronell A.	44 Cal. App. 4th 1352	184
2010	People v. Nero	181 Cal. App. 4th 504	162
2005	People v. Avitia	24 Cal. Rptr. 3d 887	106
2011	People v. Evans†	200 Cal. App. 4th 735	93
2013	Castaneda v. Department of Corrections & Rehabilation†	212 Cal. App. 4th 1051	90
2012	People v. Moore†	211 Cal. App. 4th 1179	77
1999	Pringle v. La Chapelle	87 Cal. Rptr. 2d 90	77
2011	Price v. Starbucks Corp.†	192 Cal. App. 4th 1136	72
2004	Blanchard v. DirecTV, Inc.	20 Cal. Rptr. 3d 385	69

Showing the 15 most-cited of 245 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 Richard D. Aldrich on?: Richard D. Aldrich 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

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22 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).