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 1970 / Served to 1977

Richard B. Ault

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Richard B. Ault was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1970. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1917–2000
Tenure: 1970–1977 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1970	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Ault authored 134 published opinions for the court (1969–1977), plus 2 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Hartsell (77 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. 10 of these were attributed to Ault 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
1973	People v. Hartsell	34 Cal. App. 3d 8	77
1970	Elton v. County of Orange	3 Cal. App. 3d 1053	66
1969	Hanberry v. Hearst Corp.	276 Cal. App. 2d 680	55
1971	State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance v. Flynt	17 Cal. App. 3d 538	47
1969	Zinn v. Fred R. Bright Co.	271 Cal. App. 2d 597	47
1976	People v. Mejia	57 Cal. App. 3d 574	46
1969	Pearson Ford Co. v. Ford Motor Co.	273 Cal. App. 2d 269	45
1972	People v. Barajas	26 Cal. App. 3d 932	41
1977	Pfeiffer v. City of La Mesa	69 Cal. App. 3d 74	40
1971	Perez v. Singh	21 Cal. App. 3d 870	37
1975	Jacobs v. Retail Clerks Union, Local 1222	49 Cal. App. 3d 959	34
1970	People v. Du Bose	10 Cal. App. 3d 544	34
1970	People v. Johnson	5 Cal. App. 3d 844	33
1977	In Re Marriage of Cobb	68 Cal. App. 3d 855	31
1977	Pepper Industries, Inc. v. Home Ins. Co.	67 Cal. App. 3d 1012	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 136 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 B. Ault on?: Richard B. Ault was a 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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7 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).