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 2005 / Active

Thomas Lyle Willhite Jr.

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Thomas Lyle Willhite Jr. is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2005. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1955 · age 71
Tenure: Since 2005 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2005	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of California-Los Angeles		1976
Loyola Marymount University		1979

Judicial Record

In our data, Willhite authored 83 published opinions for the court (2006–2019), plus 2 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Diaz (80 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. 85 of these were attributed to Willhite 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
2015	People v. Diaz†	238 Cal. App. 4th 1323	80
2013	Ahdout v. Hekmatjah†	213 Cal. App. 4th 21	68
2014	People v. Williams7/1/14 CA2/4†	227 Cal. App. 4th 733	58
2013	People v. Abundio†	221 Cal. App. 4th 1211	58
2010	Franklin Mint Co. v. Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP†	184 Cal. App. 4th 313	49
2017	Trejo v. Johnson†	220 Cal. Rptr. 3d 127	44
2014	Bounds v. Superior Court†	229 Cal. App. 4th 468	43
2012	Medrazo v. Honda of North Hollywood†	205 Cal. App. 4th 1	43
2016	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Michael W.†	3 Cal. App. 5th 511	39
2015	Wilson v. Southern California Edison Co.†	234 Cal. App. 4th 123	37
2011	Doubt v. Activision Publishing, Inc.†	192 Cal. App. 4th 1018	37
2011	People v. Velazquez†	201 Cal. App. 4th 219	36
2016	Veera v. Banana Republic, LLC†	6 Cal. App. 5th 907	34
2019	Zakk v. Diesel†	245 Cal. Rptr. 3d 215	31
2018	Shenouda v. Veterinary Med. Bd.†	238 Cal. Rptr. 3d 195	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 85 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 Thomas Lyle Willhite Jr. on?: Thomas Lyle Willhite Jr. is 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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21 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).