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 2002 / Active

Stuart Robert Pollak

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Stuart Robert Pollak is a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), serving since 2002. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1937 · age 89
Tenure: Since 2002 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco	–	–
2002	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2018	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Stanford University	with great distinction	1959
Harvard University	with distinction	1962

Judicial Record

In our data, Pollak authored 185 published opinions for the court (1988–2019), plus 9 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: People v. O'NEIL (123 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. 121 of these were attributed to Pollak 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	People v. O'NEIL	165 Cal. App. 4th 1351	123
2003	In Re Asia L.	132 Cal. Rptr. 2d 733	111
2007	Birkner v. Lam	67 Cal. Rptr. 3d 190	102
2014	Alvarez v. Bag Home Loans Servicing, L.P.†	228 Cal. App. 4th 941	91
2004	People v. Wells· Concurrence†	12 Cal. Rptr. 3d 762	85
2012	Phillips v. Sprint PCS†	209 Cal. App. 4th 758	71
2015	People v. J.B.†	242 Cal. App. 4th 749	61
2015	Alameda County Social Services Agency v. Paula T.†	232 Cal. App. 4th 1284	55
2011	Reyes v. Macy's, Inc.†	202 Cal. App. 4th 1119	52
2009	People v. R.V.†	171 Cal. App. 4th 239	47
2008	Kullar v. Foot Locker Retail, Inc.	168 Cal. App. 4th 116	47
2011	People v. Rauen†	201 Cal. App. 4th 421	45
2002	Mount Diablo Medical Center v. Health Net of California, Inc.	124 Cal. Rptr. 2d 607	45
2013	Maynard v. BTI Group, Inc.†	216 Cal. App. 4th 984	43
2004	Garamendi v. Golden Eagle Insurance	10 Cal. Rptr. 3d 724	43

Showing the 15 most-cited of 206 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 is Stuart Robert Pollak on?: Stuart Robert Pollak is a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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24 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).