How do judges of the Louisiana Court of Appeal reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Louisiana Court of Appeal / Joined 2002 / Active

Walter I. Lanier III

Judge, Louisiana Court of Appeal

Walter I. Lanier III is a Judge of the Louisiana Court of Appeal, serving since 2002. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2002 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2002	Louisiana Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Nicholls State University
Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College

Judicial Record

In our data, Lanier authored 184 published opinions for the court (1982–2019), plus 2 concurrences. Most cited: State v. King (96 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. 11 of these were attributed to Lanier 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
1990	State v. King	563 So. 2d 449	96
1987	State v. Moten	510 So. 2d 55	95
1986	Capital Drilling Co. v. Graves	496 So. 2d 487	53
1983	Dunaway v. Rester Refrigeration Service, Inc.	428 So. 2d 1064	52
1983	Farr v. Montgomery Ward and Co., Inc.	430 So. 2d 1141	46
1987	Belser v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins.	509 So. 2d 12	41
1987	State v. Spears	504 So. 2d 974	41
1982	Holmes v. Southeastern Fidelity Ins. Co.	422 So. 2d 1200	41
2009	Wooley v. Lucksinger	14 So. 3d 311	40
1983	Southeastern Louisiana University v. Shelton	431 So. 2d 432	39
1983	Buchanan v. Tangipahoa Parish Police Jury	426 So. 2d 720	38
1983	State v. Kohler	434 So. 2d 1110	34
1983	Steinbach v. Barfield	428 So. 2d 915	34
2002	MOBILE EXPLORATION v. Certain Underwriters	837 So. 2d 11	31
1983	State v. Hernandez	432 So. 2d 350	29

Showing the 15 most-cited of 186 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 Louisiana Court of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court is Walter I. Lanier III on?: Walter I. Lanier III is a Judge of the Louisiana Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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