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 1979 / Served to 1998

Robert L. Dossee

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Robert L. Dossee was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1979–1998 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1990	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Dossee authored 93 published opinions for the court (1980–1998), plus 2 dissents. Most cited: Armstrong World Industries, Inc. v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. (149 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. 13 of these were attributed to Dossee 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
1996	Armstrong World Industries, Inc. v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co.†	45 Cal. App. 4th 1	149
1995	People v. Castaneda	37 Cal. App. 4th 1612	64
1996	People v. Fenenbock	46 Cal. App. 4th 1688	57
1996	Michell v. Olick	49 Cal. App. 4th 1194	48
1996	Bushnell v. Japanese-American Religious & Cultural Center· Dissent†	43 Cal. App. 4th 525	43
1992	Kirby v. Albert D. Seeno Construction Co.	11 Cal. App. 4th 1059	43
1997	Ruisi v. Thieriot	53 Cal. App. 4th 1197	40
1994	People v. Gaglione	26 Cal. App. 4th 1291	40
1998	Arena v. Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp.	74 Cal. Rptr. 2d 580	38
1993	Palmer v. Shawback	17 Cal. App. 4th 296	38
1995	Badih v. Myers	36 Cal. App. 4th 1289	32
1992	Scott v. Chevron U.S.A.	5 Cal. App. 4th 510	31
1998	People v. Martin	75 Cal. Rptr. 2d 147	30
1996	Begier v. Strom	46 Cal. App. 4th 877	30
1994	People v. Wise	25 Cal. App. 4th 339	30

Showing the 15 most-cited of 95 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 L. Dossee on?: Robert L. Dossee 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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19 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).