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 1971 / Served to 1998

Robert Puglia

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Robert Puglia was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1971–1998 · 27 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1974	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1974	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Puglia authored 377 published opinions for the court (1974–1999), plus 6 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: Farmers Ins. Exchange v. Zerin (146 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. 45 of these were attributed to Puglia 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
1997	Farmers Ins. Exchange v. Zerin	53 Cal. App. 4th 445	146
1995	Ferrari v. Grand Canyon Dories	32 Cal. App. 4th 248	98
1983	Valdes v. Cory	139 Cal. App. 3d 773	96
1993	Waller v. TJD, INC.	12 Cal. App. 4th 830	88
1989	Yurick v. Superior Court	209 Cal. App. 3d 1116	87
1987	Sacramento County Welfare Department v. Lawrence Z.	195 Cal. App. 3d 107	82
1982	Graham v. Hansen	128 Cal. App. 3d 965	77
1975	Wal-Noon Corp. v. Hill	45 Cal. App. 3d 605	77
1991	People v. David L.	234 Cal. App. 3d 1655	73
1986	People v. Reber	177 Cal. App. 3d 523	73
1979	People v. Remiro	89 Cal. App. 3d 809	70
1992	Merenda v. Superior Court	3 Cal. App. 4th 1	68
1991	Gilmore v. Superior Court	230 Cal. App. 3d 416	65
1996	Olsen v. Breeze, Inc.	48 Cal. App. 4th 608	63
1992	Shoemaker v. Myers	2 Cal. App. 4th 1407	62

Showing the 15 most-cited of 396 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 Puglia on?: Robert Puglia 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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27 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).