How do judges of the Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Florida District Courts of Appeal / Joined 2000 / Active

Richard Orfinger

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Richard Orfinger is a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, serving since 2000. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2000 · 26 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

Tulane University of Louisiana
University of Florida

Judicial Record

In our data, Orfinger authored 629 published opinions for the court (1999–2019), plus 7 dissents and 20 concurrences. Most cited: Florida High School Athletic Ass'n v. Melbourne Central Catholic High School (45 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. 304 of these were attributed to Orfinger 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
2004	Florida High School Athletic Ass'n v. Melbourne Central Catholic High School	867 So. 2d 1281	45
2014	Florida Insurance Guaranty Ass'n v. Branco†	148 So. 3d 488	40
2015	Gorel v. Bank of New York Mellon†	165 So. 3d 44	34
2009	ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES, INC. v. Carter	9 So. 3d 1258	34
2001	V.L. v. State†	790 So. 2d 1140	32
2002	Mnemonics, Inc. v. Max Davis Associates, Inc.	808 So. 2d 1278	31
2010	Engesser v. Engesser	42 So. 3d 249	29
2005	Mills v. Martinez	909 So. 2d 340	28
2001	FLA. EMERGENCY PHYSICIANS-KANG & ASSOCIATES v. Parker	800 So. 2d 631	28
2008	State v. Stephenson	973 So. 2d 1259	27
2007	Capron v. State	948 So. 2d 954	27
2003	Mullins v. Kennelly	847 So. 2d 1151	27
2010	Lindon v. Dalton Hotel Corp.	49 So. 3d 299	26
2002	State v. Tyrrell	807 So. 2d 122	26
2010	Adhin v. First Horizon Home Loans†	44 So. 3d 1245	25

Showing the 15 most-cited of 657 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 Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is Richard Orfinger on?: Richard Orfinger is a Judge of the Florida District Courts 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.

26 years on the Florida District Courts of Appeal. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).