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 1997 / Served to 2001

Walter Colbath

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Walter Colbath was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 1997. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1997–2001 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1997	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Colbath authored 4 published opinions for the court (1986–2007). Most cited: Aleong v. DEPT. OF BUSINESS AND PROF. REG. (13 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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
2007	Aleong v. DEPT. OF BUSINESS AND PROF. REG.	963 So. 2d 799	13
2007	Leigh v. State	967 So. 2d 1102	10
1986	Weber v. State	492 So. 2d 1166	9
2007	Fla. Estate Developers v. Tobin Companies	964 So. 2d 238	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 Walter Colbath on?: Walter Colbath 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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4 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).