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 2009 / Served to 2018

Robert Louis Dondero

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Robert Louis Dondero was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 2009. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2009–2018 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2005	Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco	–	–
2009	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Santa Clara University		1967
University of California-Berkeley		1970

Judicial Record

In our data, Dondero authored 83 published opinions for the court (2008–2018), plus 1 dissent and 1 concurrence. Most cited: People v. Larsen (119 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. 71 of these were attributed to Dondero 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
2012	People v. Larsen†	205 Cal. App. 4th 810	119
2010	In Re Noreen G.	181 Cal. App. 4th 1359	86
2010	Stewart v. Rolling Stone LLC	181 Cal. App. 4th 664	82
2010	People v. Hollie	180 Cal. App. 4th 1262	81
2009	Taylor v. Elliott Turbomachinery Co. Inc.	171 Cal. App. 4th 564	72
2015	Tribeca Companies, LLC v. First American Title Insurance†	239 Cal. App. 4th 1088	70
2013	San Mateo Union High School District v. County of San Mateo†	213 Cal. App. 4th 418	70
2015	People v. Wright†	242 Cal. App. 4th 1461	57
2010	Cairns v. Cairns†	188 Cal. App. 4th 937	56
2011	People v. Ardoin†	196 Cal. App. 4th 102	53
2016	People v. Lehman†	247 Cal. App. 4th 795	50
2015	Jenks v. DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary US LLP†	243 Cal. App. 4th 1	50
2011	Kaufman v. Goldman†	195 Cal. App. 4th 734	50
2017	People v. Vega-Robles†	9 Cal. App. 5th 382	47
2014	Lewis v. City of Benicia†	224 Cal. App. 4th 1519	46

Showing the 15 most-cited of 85 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 Robert Louis Dondero on?: Robert Louis Dondero 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

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9 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).