How do judges of the Court of Appeals of Arizona reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Court of Appeals of Arizona / Joined 2012 / Active

Samuel A. Thumma

Judge, Court of Appeals of Arizona

Samuel A. Thumma is a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Arizona (23 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), serving since 2012. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2012 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2012	Court of Appeals of Arizona	–	–

Education

Iowa State University
University of Iowa

Judicial Record

In our data, Thumma authored 41 published opinions for the court (2010–2026), plus 2 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Crystal E. v. Department of Child Safety (117 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. 40 of these were attributed to Thumma 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
2017	Crystal E. v. Department of Child Safety· Concurrence†	241 Ariz. 576	117
2013	State v. James†	231 Ariz. 490	66
2013	State v. Dickinson†	233 Ariz. 527	60
2016	Brumett v. MGA Home Healthcare, LLC†	240 Ariz. 420	50
2014	Department of Child Safety v. Beene†	235 Ariz. 300	41
2014	Madrid v. Avalon Care Center-Chandler, L.L.C.†	236 Ariz. 221	28
2016	Alvarado v. Thomson†	240 Ariz. 12	27
2012	State v. Bayardi†	230 Ariz. 195	27
2014	Angel B. v. Vanessa J.†	234 Ariz. 69	22
2013	State v. McDonagh†	232 Ariz. 247	21
2016	Verduzco v. American Valet†	240 Ariz. 221	17
2015	Boisson v. Arizona Board of Regents†	236 Ariz. 619	17
2014	State v. Garcia†	235 Ariz. 627	16
2014	State v. Coulter†	236 Ariz. 270	15
2015	Alcombrack v. Ciccarelli†	238 Ariz. 538	13

Showing the 15 most-cited of 44 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 Court of Appeals of Arizona reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is Samuel A. Thumma on?: Samuel A. Thumma is a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Arizona.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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14 years on the Court of Appeals of Arizona. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).