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 1994

Robert J. Timlin

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Robert J. Timlin 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 ↓

Born: 1932 · age 94
Tenure: 1980–1994 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1990	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Timlin authored 8 published opinions for the court (1990–1994), plus 4 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Nance (101 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. 20 of these were attributed to Timlin 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
1991	People v. Nance· Concurrence†	1 Cal. App. 4th 1453	101
1993	People v. Foster· Concurrence†	14 Cal. App. 4th 939	82
1992	People v. Mills· Concurrence†	6 Cal. App. 4th 1278	32
1993	People Ex Rel. Department of Transportation v. Outdoor Media Group· Concurrence†	13 Cal. App. 4th 1067	29
1994	BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF RIVERSIDE CTY. v. Superior Court†	23 Cal. App. 4th 830	27
1992	In Re Issac J.· Dissent†	4 Cal. App. 4th 525	25
1993	Seibert Security Services, Inc. v. SUPERIOR COURT OF SAN BERNARDINO CTY.· Concurrence†	18 Cal. App. 4th 394	21
1992	Westbrook v. Fairchild· Concurrence†	7 Cal. App. 4th 889	21
1994	Krupnick v. Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co.· Dissent†	28 Cal. App. 4th 185	19
1992	People v. Culton†	11 Cal. App. 4th 363	17
1993	People v. Farrow†	13 Cal. App. 4th 1606	13
1990	People v. Forrest· Concurrence†	221 Cal. App. 3d 675	13
1993	Houghtaling v. SUPERIOR COURT OF SAN BERNARDINO CTY.· Concurrence†	17 Cal. App. 4th 1128	10
1993	Henriksen v. City of Rialto· Dissent†	20 Cal. App. 4th 1612	7
1992	People v. Dupuis†	7 Cal. App. 4th 696	6

Showing the 15 most-cited of 20 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 J. Timlin on?: Robert J. Timlin 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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13 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).