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 1971

Roy S. Gustafson

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Roy S. Gustafson was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1969–1971 · 1 yr

Judicial service

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

Judicial Record

In our data, Gustafson authored 30 published opinions for the court (1969–1971), plus 4 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Curtiss (42 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. 14 of these were attributed to Gustafson 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
1970	People v. Curtiss	4 Cal. App. 3d 123	42
1970	Needle v. Lasco Industries, Inc.	10 Cal. App. 3d 1105	28
1970	People v. Peterson	9 Cal. App. 3d 627	23
1971	Williams v. Williams	14 Cal. App. 3d 560	21
1970	Walker v. Capistrano Saddle Club	12 Cal. App. 3d 894	21
1971	Saliba-Kringlen Corp. v. Allen Engineering Co.	15 Cal. App. 3d 95	20
1970	People v. Bryant· Dissent†	5 Cal. App. 3d 563	17
1970	Owens Pacific Marine, Inc. v. Insurance Co. of North America	12 Cal. App. 3d 661	15
1970	Crescenta Valley Moose Lodge No. 808 v. Bunt	8 Cal. App. 3d 682	15
1970	McMahon v. Municipal Court	6 Cal. App. 3d 194	13
1970	Jones v. Evans	4 Cal. App. 3d 115	13
1970	Bezaire v. Fidelity & Deposit Co.	12 Cal. App. 3d 888	12
1970	People v. Starr· Dissent†	11 Cal. App. 3d 574	12
1970	Polin v. Chung Cho	8 Cal. App. 3d 673	12
1970	Utah Home Fire Insurance v. Fireman's Fund Insurance· Concurrence†	14 Cal. App. 3d 50	11

Showing the 15 most-cited of 39 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 Roy S. Gustafson on?: Roy S. Gustafson 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

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1 year 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).