How do judges of the Supreme Court of Florida reach the bench?

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

Supreme Court of Florida / Joined 2008 / Former Justice

Ricky Polston

Justice, Supreme Court of Florida

Ricky Polston was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida, who joined the court in 2008. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1956 · age 70
Tenure: 2008 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2008	Supreme Court of Florida	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Polston authored 45 published opinions for the court (2009–2018), plus 78 dissents and 53 concurrences. Most cited: Wallace v. Dean (168 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. 167 of these were attributed to Polston 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
2009	Wallace v. Dean· Dissent†	3 So. 3d 1035	168
2013	Tiara Condominium Ass'n v. Marsh & McLennan Companies· Dissent†	110 So. 3d 399	153
2014	Frank Special v. West Boca Medical Center· Dissent†	160 So. 3d 1251	135
2016	Ronald Williams v. State of Florida· Dissent†	186 So. 3d 989	128
2009	Sheppard v. State· Dissent†	17 So. 3d 275	113
2016	Mark James Asay v. State of Florida, SC16-102 Mark James Asay v. Julie L. Jones, etc. & SC16-628 Mark James Asay v. Julie L. Jones, etc.· Concurrence†	210 So. 3d 1	110
2013	Washington National Insurance v. Ruderman· Dissent†	117 So. 3d 943	107
2016	Angelo Atwell v. State of Florida· Dissent†	197 So. 3d 1040	103
2015	State of Florida v. Dean Alden Shelley†	176 So. 3d 914	92
2013	Philip Morris USA, Inc. v. Douglas†	110 So. 3d 419	92
2010	Ross v. State· Dissent†	45 So. 3d 403	86
2010	Penzer v. Transportation Insurance Co.	29 So. 3d 1000	83
2011	Shotts v. OP Winter Haven, Inc.· Dissent†	86 So. 3d 456	74
2018	State of Florida v. Budry Michel†	257 So. 3d 3	72
2010	Curd v. Mosaic Fertilizer, LLC· Concurrence†	39 So. 3d 1216	72

Showing the 15 most-cited of 176 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 Supreme Court of Florida reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Ricky Polston on?: Ricky Polston was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida.

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.

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