Superior Court of California, County of Kings / Joined 2010 / Served to 2021

Robert B. Burns

Presiding Judge, Superior Court of California, County of Kings

Robert B. Burns was a Presiding Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Kings (5 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 2010. They previously served on the Michigan Court of Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2010–2021 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1965	Michigan Court of Appeals	–	–
2010	Superior Court of California, County of Kings	–	–
2020	Superior Court of California, County of Kings	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Burns authored 154 published opinions for the court (1965–1987), plus 2 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Vannoy v. City of Warren (51 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. 83 of these were attributed to Burns 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
1968	Vannoy v. City of Warren†	166 N.W.2d 486	51
1968	People v. Byrd†	162 N.W.2d 777	48
1965	People v. Pate	138 N.W.2d 553	45
1966	People v. William L. Thomas	134 N.W.2d 352	41
1966	Frishett v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance	143 N.W.2d 612	39
1966	Michigan Mutual Liability Co. v. Mesner	139 N.W.2d 913	35
1968	People v. Ware†	163 N.W.2d 250	32
1965	Wolverine Upholstery Company v. Ammerman	135 N.W.2d 572	29
1967	People v. McGrandy	156 N.W.2d 48	27
1967	People v. Gilbert	154 N.W.2d 800	24
1965	Dees v. L. F. Largess Co.	136 N.W.2d 715	22
1966	Geurink v. Herlihy Mid-Continent Co.	146 N.W.2d 111	20
1968	People v. Geiger†	159 N.W.2d 383	19
1967	Van Pelt v. Paull	150 N.W.2d 185	19
1965	People v. Donald D. Williams	138 N.W.2d 498	19

Showing the 15 most-cited of 157 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 Superior Court of California, County of Kings reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Robert B. Burns on?: Robert B. Burns was a Presiding Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Kings.

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.

11 years on the Superior Court of California, County of Kings. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).