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 1981 / Served to 1999

Sheila Prell Sonenshine

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Sheila Prell Sonenshine was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1945 · age 81
Tenure: 1981–1999 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Sonenshine authored 283 published opinions for the court (1983–1999), plus 16 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: McComber v. Wells (133 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. 64 of these were attributed to Sonenshine 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
1999	McComber v. Wells	85 Cal. Rptr. 2d 376	133
1992	In Re Jonathan B.	5 Cal. App. 4th 873	127
1994	Johnson v. Pratt & Whitney Canada, Inc.	28 Cal. App. 4th 613	112
1995	Robin v. v. SUPERIOR COURT	33 Cal. App. 4th 1158	97
1992	Bein v. Brechtel-Jochim Group, Inc.	6 Cal. App. 4th 1387	80
1992	In Re Jennilee T.	3 Cal. App. 4th 212	75
1988	In Re the Marriage of Ditto	206 Cal. App. 3d 643	73
1999	People v. Yovanov	81 Cal. Rptr. 2d 586	68
1998	Sherman v. Kinetic Concepts, Inc.	79 Cal. Rptr. 2d 641	64
1991	People v. Laylah K.	229 Cal. App. 3d 1496	64
1999	In Re Matthew P.	84 Cal. Rptr. 2d 269	55
1993	Vaillette v. Fireman's Fund Insurance	18 Cal. App. 4th 680	53
1992	Hufft v. Horowitz	4 Cal. App. 4th 8	52
1995	In Re Marriage of Padilla	38 Cal. App. 4th 1212	51
1989	People v. Pedro Q.	209 Cal. App. 3d 1368	50

Showing the 15 most-cited of 316 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 Sheila Prell Sonenshine on?: Sheila Prell Sonenshine 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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17 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).