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 2014

Robert M. Mallano

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Robert M. Mallano was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1980–2014 · 33 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2000	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2008	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Mallano authored 169 published opinions for the court (1999–2013), plus 5 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Arteaga v. Brink's, Inc. (173 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. 61 of these were attributed to Mallano 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
2008	Arteaga v. Brink's, Inc.	163 Cal. App. 4th 327	173
2010	Villacres v. Abm Industries Inc.	189 Cal. App. 4th 562	138
2010	Greenspan v. LADT LLC†	191 Cal. App. 4th 486	131
2006	Gottlieb v. Kest	46 Cal. Rptr. 3d 7	82
2003	Shafer v. Berger, Kahn, Shafton, Moss, Figler, Simon & Gladstone	131 Cal. Rptr. 2d 777	78
2012	Peleg v. Neiman Marcus Group, Inc.†	204 Cal. App. 4th 1425	76
2008	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Joseph T.· Concurrence†	163 Cal. App. 4th 787	75
2001	Consumer Cause, Inc. v. Smilecare	110 Cal. Rptr. 2d 627	74
2002	Grant-Burton v. Covenant Care, Inc.	122 Cal. Rptr. 2d 204	73
2006	Maughan v. GOOGLE TECHNOLOGY, INC.	49 Cal. Rptr. 3d 861	71
2010	Greenspan v. LADT, LLC	185 Cal. App. 4th 1413	70
2010	Valencia v. Smyth	185 Cal. App. 4th 153	67
2010	Graffiti Protective Coatings, Inc. v. City of Pico Rivera	181 Cal. App. 4th 1207	66
2009	Franco v. Athens Disposal Co., Inc.	171 Cal. App. 4th 1277	65
2004	Hydro-Mill Co. v. Hayward, Tilton & Rolapp Insurance Associates, Inc.	10 Cal. Rptr. 3d 582	63

Showing the 15 most-cited of 179 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 M. Mallano on?: Robert M. Mallano was a Presiding 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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33 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).