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 2002 / Active

Richard David Fybel

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Richard David Fybel is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2002. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Orange. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2002 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	Superior Court of California, County of Orange	–	–
2002	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of California-Los Angeles		1968
University of California-Los Angeles		1971

Judicial Record

In our data, Fybel authored 246 published opinions for the court (2002–2019), plus 5 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Fladeboe v. American Isuzu Motors Inc. (380 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. 138 of these were attributed to Fybel 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
2007	Fladeboe v. American Isuzu Motors Inc.	58 Cal. Rptr. 3d 225	380
2009	Scotch v. Art Institute of California-Orange County, Inc.	173 Cal. App. 4th 986	252
2013	Lueras v. BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP†	221 Cal. App. 4th 49	231
2005	Orange County Social Services Agency v. David M.	36 Cal. Rptr. 3d 411	230
2003	Founding Members of Newport Beach Country Club v. Newport Beach Country Club, Inc.	135 Cal. Rptr. 2d 505	207
2013	West v. JPMorgan Chase Bank†	214 Cal. App. 4th 780	194
2012	Ragland v. U.S. Bank National Ass'n†	209 Cal. App. 4th 182	160
2002	Whyte v. Schlage Lock Company	125 Cal. Rptr. 2d 277	146
2006	Bardin v. DaimlerChrysler Corp.	39 Cal. Rptr. 3d 634	141
2009	Doppes v. Bentley Motors, Inc.	174 Cal. App. 4th 967	129
2006	People v. Najera	41 Cal. Rptr. 3d 244	127
2008	Hall v. Time Inc.	70 Cal. Rptr. 3d 466	116
2005	Sole Energy Co. v. Petrominerals Corp.†	128 Cal. App. 4th 212	107
2004	Franklin v. Dynamic Details, Inc.	10 Cal. Rptr. 3d 429	103
2009	Parada v. Superior Court	176 Cal. App. 4th 1554	102

Showing the 15 most-cited of 257 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 David Fybel on?: Richard David Fybel 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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24 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).