How do judges of the Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?

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

Florida District Courts of Appeal / Joined 1964 / Served to 1988

Tom R. Waddell Jr.

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Tom R. Waddell Jr. was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 1964. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1964–1988 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1964	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Waddell authored 4 published opinions for the court (1966–1977). Most cited: Rogers v. State (12 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. 2 of these were attributed to Waddell 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
1976	Rogers v. State	341 So. 2d 196	12
1966	Reeves v. North Broward Hospital District	191 So. 2d 307	5
1977	Campbell v. Cowell†	342 So. 2d 1037	1
1977	Sullivan v. Bloom†	342 So. 2d 1036	1

Showing the 4 most-cited of 4 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 Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Tom R. Waddell Jr. on?: Tom R. Waddell Jr. was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal.

Sources

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

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24 years on the Florida District Courts of Appeal. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).