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 2014

Steven C. Suzukawa

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Steven C. Suzukawa was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 2006. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2006–2014 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

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

Judicial Record

In our data, Suzukawa authored 67 published opinions for the court (1992–2014), plus 2 concurrences. Most cited: NYGÅRD, INC. v. Uusi-Kerttula (170 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. 35 of these were attributed to Suzukawa 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
2008	NYGÅRD, INC. v. Uusi-Kerttula	72 Cal. Rptr. 3d 210	170
2012	Shoyoye v. County of Los Angeles†	203 Cal. App. 4th 947	119
2013	Yun Hee So v. Sook Ja Shin†	212 Cal. App. 4th 652	99
2010	In Re Christopher C.	182 Cal. App. 4th 73	79
2007	Magic Kitchen LLC v. Good Things International, Ltd.	63 Cal. Rptr. 3d 713	63
2013	Malin v. Singer†	217 Cal. App. 4th 1283	61
2010	Bowman v. Wyatt	186 Cal. App. 4th 286	56
2008	Plumley v. Mockett	164 Cal. App. 4th 1031	54
2012	Joaquin v. City of Los Angeles†	202 Cal. App. 4th 1207	45
1992	Save Our Residential Environment v. City of West Hollywood	9 Cal. App. 4th 1745	40
2012	Gorlach v. Sports Club Co.†	209 Cal. App. 4th 1497	36
2007	Giullanoi v. Inland Empire Personnel, Inc.	58 Cal. Rptr. 3d 5	34
2013	Albanese v. Menounos†	218 Cal. App. 4th 923	29
2012	Personal Court Reporters, Inc. v. Rand†	205 Cal. App. 4th 182	29
2013	Heyen v. Safeway Inc.†	216 Cal. App. 4th 795	26

Showing the 15 most-cited of 69 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 Steven C. Suzukawa on?: Steven C. Suzukawa 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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7 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).