How do judges of the Court of Appeals of Arizona reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Court of Appeals of Arizona / Joined 1982 / Served to 2000

Thomas C. Kleinschmidt

Judge, Court of Appeals of Arizona

Thomas C. Kleinschmidt was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Arizona, who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1935 · age 91
Tenure: 1982–2000 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	Court of Appeals of Arizona	–	–

Education

Westminster College
Duke University

Judicial Record

In our data, Kleinschmidt authored 316 published opinions for the court (1982–2000), plus 32 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: Martin v. Reinstein (153 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. 147 of these were attributed to Kleinschmidt 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
1999	Martin v. Reinstein· Dissent†	987 P.2d 779	153
1984	Farr v. Transamerica Occidental Life Insurance	699 P.2d 376	76
1994	Cummings v. Cummings	897 P.2d 685	53
1990	Shoen v. Shoen	804 P.2d 787	52
1995	State v. Strayhand	911 P.2d 577	49
1986	Western Technologies, Inc. v. Sverdrup & Parcel, Inc.	739 P.2d 1318	45
1990	State v. Schroeder· Concurrence†	804 P.2d 776	44
1992	Church v. Rawson Drug & Sundry Co.	842 P.2d 1355	42
1996	Crum v. Superior Court	922 P.2d 316	41
1996	Miel v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance	912 P.2d 1333	39
2000	State v. Marshall· Dissent†	4 P.3d 1039	35
1987	Terry Grantham Co. v. Industrial Commission	741 P.2d 313	34
1992	State v. Ellis	838 P.2d 1310	32
1990	State v. Tucker	798 P.2d 1349	32
1988	Vinson v. Marton & Associates	764 P.2d 736	32

Showing the 15 most-cited of 365 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 Court of Appeals of Arizona reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Thomas C. Kleinschmidt on?: Thomas C. Kleinschmidt was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Arizona.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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17 years on the Court of Appeals of Arizona. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).