How do judges of the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Alabama Court of Civil Appeals / Joined 1972 / Served to 1989

Richard L. Holmes

Judge, Alabama Court of Civil Appeals

Richard L. Holmes was a Judge of the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals, who joined the court in 1972. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1937–2000
Tenure: 1972–1989 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1972	Alabama Court of Civil Appeals	–	–

Education

The University of Alabama
The University of Alabama

Judicial Record

In our data, Holmes authored 1,346 published opinions for the court (1972–1999), plus 45 dissents and 41 concurrences. Most cited: Brannon v. Brannon (165 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. 599 of these were attributed to Holmes 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
1985	Brannon v. Brannon	477 So. 2d 445	165
1986	Lucero v. Lucero	485 So. 2d 347	134
1981	Williams v. Williams	402 So. 2d 1029	96
1996	Brown v. Whitaker Contracting Corp.	681 So. 2d 226	82
1985	Nowell v. Nowell	474 So. 2d 1128	72
1987	Ex Parte Harris	506 So. 2d 1003	70
1979	Orr v. Orr	374 So. 2d 895	69
1979	Young v. Young	376 So. 2d 737	66
1985	Flowers v. Flowers	479 So. 2d 1257	65
1994	Porter v. Fisher	636 So. 2d 682	63
1975	Sutton v. Sutton	314 So. 2d 707	59
1973	State Farm Mutual Automobile Ins. Co., Inc. v. Griffin	286 So. 2d 302	58
1986	Santmier v. Santmier	494 So. 2d 95	55
1975	Jackson Company v. Faulkner	315 So. 2d 591	51
1983	Walker v. CAROLINA MILLS LUMBER CO., INC.	441 So. 2d 980	48

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,432 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 Alabama Court of Civil Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Richard L. Holmes on?: Richard L. Holmes was a Judge of the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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17 years on the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).