How do judges of the Indiana Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Indiana Court of Appeals / Joined 1980 / Served to 2006

Wesley W. Ratliff

Judge, Indiana Court of Appeals

Wesley W. Ratliff was a Judge of the Indiana Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1925–2006
Tenure: 1980–2006 · 26 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Indiana Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Ball State University
Valparaiso University

Judicial Record

In our data, Ratliff authored 846 published opinions for the court (1980–2006), plus 27 dissents and 68 concurrences. Most cited: DeHaan v. DeHaan (154 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. 247 of these were attributed to Ratliff 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	DeHaan v. DeHaan	572 N.E.2d 1315	154
1981	English Coal Co., Inc. v. Durcholz	422 N.E.2d 302	117
1983	Plan-Tec, Inc. v. Wiggins	443 N.E.2d 1212	109
1989	Kahn v. Cundiff	533 N.E.2d 164	103
1981	Moll v. South Central Solar Systems, Inc.	419 N.E.2d 154	96
1980	Campbell v. Eli Lilly & Co.· Concurrence†	413 N.E.2d 1054	95
1992	Comfax Corp. v. North American Van Lines, Inc.	587 N.E.2d 118	83
1987	Indiana & Michigan Electric Co. v. Terre Haute Industries, Inc.· Concurrence†	507 N.E.2d 588	80
1980	Maroon v. State, Department of Mental Health· Concurrence†	411 N.E.2d 404	80
1981	D. H. v. J. H.†	418 N.E.2d 286	78
1980	Clark v. Clark	404 N.E.2d 23	75
1985	Dotlich v. Dotlich	475 N.E.2d 331	68
1990	Rubin v. Johnson	550 N.E.2d 324	66
1984	Terre Haute Regional Hospital, Inc. v. El-Issa	470 N.E.2d 1371	65
1989	WATSON RURAL WATER CO. INC. v. Ind. Cities Water Corp.	540 N.E.2d 131	63

Showing the 15 most-cited of 944 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 Indiana Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Wesley W. Ratliff on?: Wesley W. Ratliff was a Judge of the Indiana Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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