How do judges of the New York Appellate Division reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Appellate Division / Joined 2004 / Served to 2008

Robert A. Lifson

Justice, New York Appellate Division

Robert A. Lifson was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division, who joined the court in 2004. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2004–2008 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2004	New York Appellate Division	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Lifson authored 4 published opinions for the court (2005–2008), plus 13 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Shaya B. Pacific, LLC v. Wilson, Elser, Moskowitz, Edelman & Dicker, LLP (125 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 Lifson 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
2006	Shaya B. Pacific, LLC v. Wilson, Elser, Moskowitz, Edelman & Dicker, LLP· Dissent†	38 A.D.3d 34	125
2007	Barnett v. Schwartz· Dissent†	47 A.D.3d 197	46
2005	Langan v. St. Vincent's Hospital†	25 A.D.3d 90	21
2007	Aspen Creek Estates, Ltd. v. Town of Brookhaven· Dissent†	47 A.D.3d 267	20
2006	Parker v. Booker· Dissent†	33 A.D.3d 602	14
2006	Briffel v. County of Nassau· Dissent†	31 A.D.3d 79	12
2008	Barr v. Cannata· Dissent†	57 A.D.3d 813	11
2008	Rios v. Carrillo†	53 A.D.3d 111	9
2006	Kempter v. Horton· Dissent†	33 A.D.3d 868	7
2006	Kattas v. Sherman· Dissent†	32 A.D.3d 496	7
2008	BLF Associates v. Town of Hempstead†	59 A.D.3d 51	5
2005	Baba-Ali v. State of New York· Dissent†	20 A.D.3d 376	5
2008	In re Sivin†	57 A.D.3d 115	3
2006	Shapiro v. Kurtzman· Concurrence†	32 A.D.3d 508	3
2008	Ashley Homes of L.I., Inc. v. O'Dea· Concurrence†	51 A.D.3d 911	2

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 New York Appellate Division reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Robert A. Lifson on?: Robert A. Lifson was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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4 years on the New York Appellate Division. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).