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 1969 / Served to 1996

Robert W. Merrill

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Robert W. Merrill was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1969–1996 · 26 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1985	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Merrill authored 157 published opinions for the court (1985–1999), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Xuereb v. Marcus & Millichap, Inc. (160 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. 10 of these were attributed to Merrill 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
1992	Xuereb v. Marcus & Millichap, Inc.	3 Cal. App. 4th 1338	160
1995	Gunderson v. Fire Insurance Exchange	37 Cal. App. 4th 1106	119
1995	Communist Party of the United States of Amerika v. 522 Valencia, Inc.	35 Cal. App. 4th 980	80
1990	Donald v. Cafe Royale, Inc.	218 Cal. App. 3d 168	80
1999	Nightingale v. Hyundai Motor America	31 Cal. App. 4th 99	78
1990	Clausing v. San Francisco Unified School District	221 Cal. App. 3d 1224	77
1992	Alling v. Universal Manufacturing Corp.	5 Cal. App. 4th 1412	69
1993	Desmond v. County of Contra Costa	21 Cal. App. 4th 330	68
1989	Sokolow v. County of San Mateo	213 Cal. App. 3d 231	66
1994	Jones v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co.	26 Cal. App. 4th 1717	49
1987	Commercial Union Insurance v. Superior Court	196 Cal. App. 3d 1205	43
1994	People v. Garrett	30 Cal. App. 4th 962	40
1989	Western Continental Operating Co. v. Natural Gas Corp.	212 Cal. App. 3d 752	40
1986	Posey v. State of California	180 Cal. App. 3d 836	37
1992	People v. Cantrell	7 Cal. App. 4th 523	36

Showing the 15 most-cited of 158 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 W. Merrill on?: Robert W. Merrill 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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26 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).