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 2000 / Active

Richard Todd Fields

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Richard Todd Fields is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2000. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2000 · 26 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2007	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2008	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2017	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

California State University-Fullerton		1981
Western State College of Law at Argosy University		1983
University of San Diego		1987

Judicial Record

In our data, Fields authored 7 published opinions for the court (2017–2019). Most cited: People v. Garcia (280 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. 7 of these were attributed to Fields 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
2018	People v. Garcia†	239 Cal. Rptr. 3d 558	280
2018	Riverside Cnty. Dep't of Pub. Soc. Servs. v. S.A. (In re N.G.)†	238 Cal. Rptr. 3d 304	111
2018	Warren v. Kia Motors Am., Inc.†	241 Cal. Rptr. 3d 263	51
2019	Huckey v. City of Temecula†	250 Cal. Rptr. 3d 336	29
2017	People v. Tennard†	226 Cal. Rptr. 3d 652	16
2018	Bear Creek Master Ass'n v. S. Cal. Investors, Inc.†	239 Cal. Rptr. 3d 547	10
2017	People v. Arredondo†	222 Cal. Rptr. 3d 42	2

Showing the 7 most-cited of 7 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 is Richard Todd Fields on?: Richard Todd Fields is 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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26 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).