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 2006 / Served to 2017

Stephen J.. Kane

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Stephen J.. Kane was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 2006. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1952 · age 74
Tenure: 2006–2017 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2006	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Kane authored 65 published opinions for the court (2006–2017). Most cited: Brendan O. v. Merced County Human Services Agency (161 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. 43 of these were attributed to Kane 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
2011	Brendan O. v. Merced County Human Services Agency†	197 Cal. App. 4th 586	161
2006	Robertson v. Fleetwood Travel Trailers of California, Inc.	50 Cal. Rptr. 3d 731	137
2013	Hutton v. Fidelity National Title Co.†	213 Cal. App. 4th 486	122
2007	San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center v. County of Merced	57 Cal. Rptr. 3d 663	90
2007	People v. Tripp	60 Cal. Rptr. 3d 534	82
2007	Nichols v. City of Taft	66 Cal. Rptr. 3d 680	74
2017	Association of Irritated Residents v. Department of Conservation†	11 Cal. App. 5th 1202	66
2012	Sumner Hill Homeowners' Ass'n v. Rio Mesa Holdings, LLC†	205 Cal. App. 4th 999	65
2012	Wohlgemuth v. Caterpillar Inc.†	207 Cal. App. 4th 1252	63
2012	Kern County Department of Child Support Services v. Camacho†	209 Cal. App. 4th 1028	61
2016	Brooks v. Mercy Hospital†	1 Cal. App. 5th 1	53
2013	Bank of America, N.A. v. Roberts†	217 Cal. App. 4th 1386	53
2014	California Crane School, Inc. v. National Commission for Certification of Crane Operators†	226 Cal. App. 4th 12	51
2009	Fidelity National Title Insurance v. Schroeder	179 Cal. App. 4th 834	51
2013	People v. Koua Xiong†	215 Cal. App. 4th 1259	41

Showing the 15 most-cited of 65 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 Stephen J.. Kane on?: Stephen J.. Kane 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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11 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).