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 1980 / Served to 2010

Richard M. Sims III

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Richard M. Sims III was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1980–2010 · 30 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Sims authored 442 published opinions for the court (1982–2010), plus 7 dissents and 33 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Zackery (448 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. 482 of these were attributed to Sims 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	People v. Zackery†	54 Cal. Rptr. 3d 198	448
2005	Kaufman & Broad Communities, Inc. v. Performance Plastering, Inc.†	133 Cal. App. 4th 26	193
1991	Mangini v. Aerojet-General Corp.†	230 Cal. App. 3d 1125	171
2002	City of Lincoln v. Barringer†	126 Cal. Rptr. 2d 178	167
2005	Claudio v. Regents of University of Cal.†	35 Cal. Rptr. 3d 837	165
2000	Lester v. Lennane†	101 Cal. Rptr. 2d 86	154
2005	Christoff v. Union Pacific Railroad†	36 Cal. Rptr. 3d 6	148
2009	Nielsen v. Gibson†	178 Cal. App. 4th 318	138
2009	Myers v. Trendwest Resorts, Inc.†	178 Cal. App. 4th 735	135
2004	People v. Taylor†	14 Cal. Rptr. 3d 550	133
1987	Richmond v. Dart Industries, Inc.†	196 Cal. App. 3d 869	126
1985	People v. Pitmon· Concurrence†	170 Cal. App. 3d 38	115
1988	Null v. City of Los Angeles†	206 Cal. App. 3d 1528	114
2009	People v. Freitas†	179 Cal. App. 4th 747	106
2002	Jordan v. Department of Motor Vehicles· Concurrence†	123 Cal. Rptr. 2d 122	98

Showing the 15 most-cited of 482 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 M. Sims III on?: Richard M. Sims III was 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

30 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).