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 1989 / Served to 2010

Steven M. Vartabedian

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Steven M. Vartabedian was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1989. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1950 · age 76
Tenure: 1989–2010 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Vartabedian authored 217 published opinions for the court (1986–2010). Most cited: Horsford v. Board of Trustees of California State University (279 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. 29 of these were attributed to Vartabedian 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
2005	Horsford v. Board of Trustees of California State University	33 Cal. Rptr. 3d 644	279
2006	People v. Frank S.	46 Cal. Rptr. 3d 839	165
1990	In Re Steve W.	217 Cal. App. 3d 10	80
1997	People v. Martinez	53 Cal. App. 4th 1212	68
1998	In Re Dylan T.	76 Cal. Rptr. 2d 684	65
1995	Ott v. Alfa-Laval Agri, Inc.	31 Cal. App. 4th 1439	61
1993	People v. Hord	15 Cal. App. 4th 711	61
2000	Harustak v. Wilkins	100 Cal. Rptr. 2d 718	56
2000	Kern County Department of Human Services v. Michael U.†	80 Cal. App. 4th 1344	50
1996	Deborah S. v. Superior Court	43 Cal. App. 4th 741	47
2008	Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Mendes	72 Cal. Rptr. 3d 553	46
1999	People v. Van Winkle	89 Cal. Rptr. 2d 28	45
2008	People v. Torres	163 Cal. App. 4th 1420	43
2002	In Re Angela C.	120 Cal. Rptr. 2d 922	43
1995	Britz, Inc. v. Alfa-Laval Food & Dairy Co.	34 Cal. App. 4th 1085	43

Showing the 15 most-cited of 217 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 M. Vartabedian on?: Steven M. Vartabedian 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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20 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).