How do judges of the Supreme Court of Florida reach the bench?

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

Supreme Court of Florida / Joined 1987 / Served to 1997

Stephen H. Grimes

Justice, Supreme Court of Florida

Stephen H. Grimes was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida (7 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1987. He previously served on the Florida District Courts of Appeal. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1927 · age 99
Tenure: 1987–1997 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1973	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–
1987	Supreme Court of Florida	–	–

Education

Florida Southern College
University of Florida
University of Florida

Judicial Record

In our data, Grimes authored 1,166 published opinions for the court (1973–1998), plus 34 dissents and 29 concurrences. Most cited: Venetian Salami Co. v. Parthenais (615 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. 397 of these were attributed to Grimes 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
1989	Venetian Salami Co. v. Parthenais	554 So. 2d 499	615
1993	Popple v. State	626 So. 2d 185	417
1993	Fabre v. Marin	623 So. 2d 1182	251
1995	State v. Callaway	658 So. 2d 983	219
1993	Tripp v. State	622 So. 2d 941	217
1988	State v. Pettis	520 So. 2d 250	213
1991	Stockman v. Downs	573 So. 2d 835	212
1994	Ethan Allen, Inc. v. Georgetown Manor	647 So. 2d 812	189
1997	State v. Owen	696 So. 2d 715	180
1998	Deni Associates of Florida, Inc. v. State Farm Fire & Cas. Ins. Co.	711 So. 2d 1135	161
1990	Commonwealth Fed. Sav. & Loan Ass'n v. Tubero	569 So. 2d 1271	159
1989	In re T.W.· Concurrence†	551 So. 2d 1186	142
1993	BD. OF CTY. COM'RS OF BREVARD v. Snyder	627 So. 2d 469	127
1992	Williams v. State	594 So. 2d 273	112
1993	Palm Beach Sav. & Loan Ass'n v. Fishbein	619 So. 2d 267	110

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,229 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 Supreme Court of Florida reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Stephen H. Grimes on?: Stephen H. Grimes was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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