How do judges of the New York Appellate Division reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Appellate Division / Joined 1980 / Served to 2001

William C. Thompson

Justice, New York Appellate Division

William C. Thompson was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1980–2001 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	New York Appellate Division	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Thompson authored 44 published opinions for the court (1981–2000), plus 35 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: County of Westchester v. Welton Becket Associates (103 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. 94 of these were attributed to Thompson 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
1984	County of Westchester v. Welton Becket Associates†	102 A.D.2d 34	103
1985	Blake v. Blake Agency, Inc.†	107 A.D.2d 139	63
1988	Krugman v. Board of Assessors of the Village of Atlantic Beach†	141 A.D.2d 175	60
1997	Morales v. Walter†	230 A.D.2d 7	58
1983	People v. Crosby†	91 A.D.2d 20	54
1986	Sawh v. Bridges†	120 A.D.2d 74	47
1989	Rimoldi v. Schanzer· Concurrence†	147 A.D.2d 541	45
1983	Strauss v. Belle Realty Co.†	98 A.D.2d 424	42
1987	Delio v. Westchester County Medical Center†	129 A.D.2d 1	40
1984	People v. Green†	103 A.D.2d 362	39
1986	McDermott v. McDermott· Concurrence†	119 A.D.2d 370	36
1998	People v. Rush†	242 A.D.2d 108	31
1992	Billsborrow v. Dow Chemical, U.S.A.†	177 A.D.2d 7	30
1984	Holly v. Pennysaver Corp.· Dissent†	98 A.D.2d 570	29
1995	People v. Hudson†	217 A.D.2d 53	28

Showing the 15 most-cited of 94 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 New York Appellate Division reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was William C. Thompson on?: William C. Thompson was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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21 years on the New York Appellate Division. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).