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 1977 / Served to 1987

Robert E. Rickles

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Robert E. Rickles was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1977–1987 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Rickles authored 39 published opinions for the court (1983–1987), plus 3 dissents. Most cited: Joslin v. H.A.S. Insurance Brokerage (276 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. 42 of these were attributed to Rickles 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
1986	Joslin v. H.A.S. Insurance Brokerage†	184 Cal. App. 3d 369	276
1985	California Shoppers, Inc. v. Royal Globe Insurance Co.· Dissent†	175 Cal. App. 3d 1	170
1985	DeBottari v. City Council†	171 Cal. App. 3d 1204	42
1984	People v. Moreno†	158 Cal. App. 3d 109	31
1984	Jones v. Interstate Recovery Service†	160 Cal. App. 3d 925	30
1984	People v. Chagolla†	151 Cal. App. 3d 1045	30
1986	Corns v. Miller†	181 Cal. App. 3d 195	27
1986	People v. Gutierrez†	180 Cal. App. 3d 1076	22
1986	Gilbertson v. Osman†	185 Cal. App. 3d 308	21
1985	Goodwest Rubber Corp. v. Munoz†	170 Cal. App. 3d 919	18
1985	People v. Blankenship†	167 Cal. App. 3d 840	16
1985	Shamblin v. Berge†	166 Cal. App. 3d 118	14
1985	In Re Handa†	166 Cal. App. 3d 966	13
1984	In Re Ditsch†	162 Cal. App. 3d 578	13
1984	In Re Cleaver†	158 Cal. App. 3d 770	13

Showing the 15 most-cited of 42 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 E. Rickles on?: Robert E. Rickles 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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9 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).