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 1978 / Served to 1984

Richard Amerian

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Richard Amerian was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1978. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1978–1984 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1978	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Amerian authored 27 published opinions for the court (1982–1984), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: People v. Guilford (27 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. 8 of these were attributed to Amerian 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
1984	People v. Guilford	151 Cal. App. 3d 406	27
1982	Appalachian Insurance Co. v. Rivcom Corp.	130 Cal. App. 3d 818	20
1983	People v. Barela	145 Cal. App. 3d 152	18
1984	California School Employees Ass'n v. Azusa Unified School District†	152 Cal. App. 3d 580	16
1983	Trapp v. Schuyler Construction	149 Cal. App. 3d 1140	16
1983	Johnson v. Trans World Airlines, Inc.	149 Cal. App. 3d 518	16
1983	City of Los Angeles v. County of Los Angeles	147 Cal. App. 3d 952	16
1983	Hopson v. City of Los Angeles	139 Cal. App. 3d 347	16
1982	Lozano v. Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board	130 Cal. App. 3d 749	13
1984	People v. Bergman	154 Cal. App. 3d 30	12
1984	Penner v. Falk	153 Cal. App. 3d 858	11
1983	County of Los Angeles v. Amwest Surety Insurance†	147 Cal. App. 3d 961	11
1982	Lewis v. City of Los Angeles	137 Cal. App. 3d 518	11
1983	Weary v. Civil Service Commission	140 Cal. App. 3d 189	10
1983	Tedesco v. Crocker National Bank	148 Cal. App. 3d 1211	9

Showing the 15 most-cited of 28 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 Amerian on?: Richard Amerian 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.

5 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).