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 1974 / Served to 1992

Walter P. Capaccioli

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Walter P. Capaccioli was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1974. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1974–1992 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1974	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1986	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Capaccioli authored 69 published opinions for the court (1987–1992), plus 1 concurrence. Most cited: Tarmann v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance (188 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. 70 of these were attributed to Capaccioli 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
1991	Tarmann v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance†	2 Cal. App. 4th 153	188
1992	People v. Leung†	5 Cal. App. 4th 482	64
1992	Thibodeau v. Crum†	4 Cal. App. 4th 749	62
1991	Aim Insurance Co. v. Culcasi†	229 Cal. App. 3d 209	57
1991	Stalberg v. Western Title Insurance†	230 Cal. App. 3d 1223	46
1992	Resolution Trust Corp. v. Winslow†	9 Cal. App. 4th 1799	44
1988	Lussier v. San Lorenzo Valley Water District†	206 Cal. App. 3d 92	42
1990	Silva v. Daniel O. H.†	220 Cal. App. 3d 814	41
1992	Reddy v. Gonzalez†	8 Cal. App. 4th 118	40
1988	Klein v. Superior Court†	198 Cal. App. 3d 894	39
1992	People v. Jimenez†	11 Cal. App. 4th 1611	38
1990	People v. Jones†	224 Cal. App. 3d 1309	31
1989	State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. v. Superior Court†	210 Cal. App. 3d 604	31
1990	Glage v. Hawes Firearms Co.†	226 Cal. App. 3d 314	27
1988	Gallo v. Superior Court†	200 Cal. App. 3d 1375	24

Showing the 15 most-cited of 70 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 Walter P. Capaccioli on?: Walter P. Capaccioli was 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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18 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).