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 1981 / Served to 2001

Thomas Fulton Crosby Jr.

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Thomas Fulton Crosby Jr. was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1940–2004
Tenure: 1981–2001 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Crosby authored 205 published opinions for the court (1983–2001), plus 20 dissents and 24 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Nguyen (156 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. 83 of these were attributed to Crosby 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
1988	People v. Nguyen	204 Cal. App. 3d 181	156
1999	In Re Julie M.	81 Cal. Rptr. 2d 354	149
1996	Thrifty-Tel, Inc. v. Bezenek	46 Cal. App. 4th 1559	92
2000	People v. Antonio R.	93 Cal. Rptr. 2d 212	74
1983	Hall v. Superior Court	150 Cal. App. 3d 411	59
1984	Coalition for Student Action v. City of Fullerton	153 Cal. App. 3d 1194	56
2001	Choate v. County of Orange	103 Cal. Rptr. 2d 339	52
1997	People v. Ortiz	57 Cal. App. 4th 480	48
1994	J.A. Jones Construction Co. v. Superior Court· Dissent†	27 Cal. App. 4th 1568	46
1995	Chantiles v. Lake Forest II Master Homeowners Ass'n· Concurrence†	37 Cal. App. 4th 914	44
1984	Register Division of Freedom Newspapers, Inc. v. County of Orange· Dissent†	158 Cal. App. 3d 893	44
1984	Furda v. Superior Court· Concurrence†	161 Cal. App. 3d 418	43
1983	Nabisco, Inc. v. Transport Indemnity Co.	143 Cal. App. 3d 831	43
1998	Mediterranean Constr. Co. v. State Farm Fire & Cas. Co.	77 Cal. Rptr. 2d 781	42
1999	Jamestown Builders, Inc. v. General Star Indemnity Co.	91 Cal. Rptr. 2d 514	41

Showing the 15 most-cited of 249 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 Thomas Fulton Crosby Jr. on?: Thomas Fulton Crosby Jr. 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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).