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 1929 / Served to 1950

Rolfe Lyon Thompson

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Rolfe Lyon Thompson was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1929. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1867–1958
Tenure: 1929–1950 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1929	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Thompson authored 687 published opinions for the court (1933–1949), plus 3 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Roth Drug, Inc. v. Johnson (80 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. 199 of these were attributed to Thompson 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
1936	Roth Drug, Inc. v. Johnson	13 Cal. App. 2d 720	80
1939	Scott v. McPheeters†	33 Cal. App. 2d 629	79
1946	People v. Benenato	77 Cal. App. 2d 350	67
1940	Davis v. Morris	37 Cal. App. 2d 269	61
1944	Capital National Bank v. Smith	62 Cal. App. 2d 328	53
1944	Gibson v. De La Salle Institute· Dissent†	66 Cal. App. 2d 609	51
1934	Norton v. Puter†	138 Cal. App. 253	50
1945	People v. Quiel	68 Cal. App. 2d 674	46
1933	Shannon v. Central-Gaither Union School District†	23 P.2d 759	46
1937	People v. Kennedy	21 Cal. App. 2d 185	45
1944	People v. Corlett	67 Cal. App. 2d 33	42
1939	People v. Angelopoulus	30 Cal. App. 2d 538	42
1945	Miller v. Pacific Constructors, Inc.	68 Cal. App. 2d 529	41
1942	Balkwill v. City of Stockton	50 Cal. App. 2d 661	41
1935	Mutual Life Insurance of New York v. Franck	9 Cal. App. 2d 528	39

Showing the 15 most-cited of 692 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 Rolfe Lyon Thompson on?: Rolfe Lyon Thompson was a 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

20 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).