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 1989

Wickson Woolpert

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Wickson Woolpert was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1974. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1974–1989 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1974	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Woolpert authored 77 published opinions for the court (1981–1988), plus 5 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: River West, Inc. v. Nickel (65 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. 15 of these were attributed to Woolpert 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
1987	River West, Inc. v. Nickel	188 Cal. App. 3d 1297	65
1981	Conn v. National Can Corporation	124 Cal. App. 3d 630	51
1984	Quigley v. Pet, Inc.	162 Cal. App. 3d 877	45
1986	All-West Design, Inc. v. Boozer	183 Cal. App. 3d 1212	44
1984	People v. Carreon	151 Cal. App. 3d 559	35
1984	People v. Reyes	153 Cal. App. 3d 803	32
1983	DeLeon v. Commercial Manufacturing & Supply Co.	148 Cal. App. 3d 336	32
1988	People v. Thompson	206 Cal. App. 3d 459	31
1987	In Re Venita L.	191 Cal. App. 3d 1229	30
1987	People v. Granillo	197 Cal. App. 3d 110	29
1986	People v. Valdez	177 Cal. App. 3d 680	28
1985	People v. Romero	167 Cal. App. 3d 1148	28
1983	People v. Cobb	139 Cal. App. 3d 578	28
1985	Kern River Public Access Committee v. City of Bakersfield· Dissent†	170 Cal. App. 3d 1205	26
1987	State of Washington Ex Rel. Burton v. Leyser	196 Cal. App. 3d 451	25

Showing the 15 most-cited of 84 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 Wickson Woolpert on?: Wickson Woolpert 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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15 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).