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 2008 / Served to 2021

Tricia Ann Bigelow

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Tricia Ann Bigelow was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 2008. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1961 · age 65
Tenure: 2008–2021 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2008	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2010	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Pepperdine University
California State University-Fullerton

Judicial Record

In our data, Bigelow authored 80 published opinions for the court (1978–2019), plus 6 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Frandsen (313 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. 68 of these were attributed to Bigelow 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
2019	People v. Frandsen†	245 Cal. Rptr. 3d 658	313
2012	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. L.C.†	212 Cal. App. 4th 1117	114
2014	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. R.C.†	228 Cal. App. 4th 720	97
2010	Mendoza v. ADP Screening & Selection Services, Inc.	182 Cal. App. 4th 1644	93
2011	Gerbosi v. Gaims, Weil, West & Epstein, LLP†	193 Cal. App. 4th 435	86
2014	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Jasmine M.†	228 Cal. App. 4th 953	75
2012	Hodjat v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance†	211 Cal. App. 4th 1	68
2011	Cowan v. Krayzman†	196 Cal. App. 4th 907	65
2017	L. A. Cnty. Dep't of Children & Family Servs. v. Richard C. (In re Alexzander C.)†	226 Cal. Rptr. 3d 515	62
2012	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family v. Jose C.†	204 Cal. App. 4th 1317	58
2010	Futrell v. Payday California, Inc.†	190 Cal. App. 4th 1419	58
2009	Cohen v. DirecTV, Inc.	178 Cal. App. 4th 966	51
2011	Lefebvre v. Lefebvre†	199 Cal. App. 4th 696	47
2015	People v. Solis†	232 Cal. App. 4th 1108	46
2011	Vafi v. McCloskey†	193 Cal. App. 4th 874	46

Showing the 15 most-cited of 88 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 Tricia Ann Bigelow on?: Tricia Ann Bigelow was a Presiding 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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13 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).