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 1976 / Served to 2007

Vaino Spencer

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Vaino Spencer was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1976. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1976–2007 · 30 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1980	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Spencer authored 172 published opinions for the court (1980–2006), plus 6 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: McKell v. Washington Mutual, Inc. (164 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. 33 of these were attributed to Spencer 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
2006	McKell v. Washington Mutual, Inc.†	142 Cal. App. 4th 1457	164
2003	Melchior v. New Line Productions, Inc.	131 Cal. Rptr. 2d 347	130
1994	People v. Andersen	26 Cal. App. 4th 1241	124
1991	United Community Church v. Garcin· Concurrence†	231 Cal. App. 3d 327	118
1987	Niederer v. Ferreira	189 Cal. App. 3d 1485	80
1988	Van De Kamp v. Bank of America†	204 Cal. App. 3d 819	72
1986	Saylin v. California Insurance Guarantee Ass'n	179 Cal. App. 3d 256	67
1993	NOLA M. v. University of Southern California· Dissent†	16 Cal. App. 4th 421	62
2002	Kong v. CITY OF HAWAIIAN GARDENS REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY	134 Cal. Rptr. 2d 260	60
2000	Wilner v. Sunset Life Insurance	93 Cal. Rptr. 2d 413	59
1998	Murillo v. Rite Stuff Foods, Inc.	77 Cal. Rptr. 2d 12	56
1996	Sanchez v. Swinerton & Walberg Co.	47 Cal. App. 4th 1461	56
2001	City of Pomona v. Superior Court	107 Cal. Rptr. 2d 710	54
1997	People v. Hinks	58 Cal. App. 4th 1157	54
2003	Simi Corporation v. Garamendi	1 Cal. Rptr. 3d 207	53

Showing the 15 most-cited of 184 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 Vaino Spencer on?: Vaino Spencer 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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30 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).