Superior Court of California, County of Orange / Joined 1998 / Served to 2009

William D. Evans

Judge, Superior Court of California, County of Orange

William D. Evans was a Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Orange, who joined the court in 1998. He previously served on the Iowa Supreme Court. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1852–1936
Tenure: 1998–2009 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1908	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–
1998	Superior Court of California, County of Orange	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Evans authored 1,741 published opinions for the court (1908–1945), plus 73 dissents and 25 concurrences. Most cited: Curtis v. Armagast (85 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. 1,204 of these were attributed to Evans 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
1912	Curtis v. Armagast· Dissent†	158 Iowa 507	85
1909	Bruggeman v. Illinois Central Railroad· Dissent†	147 Iowa 187	64
1930	Jensen v. Sorenson	233 N.W. 717	61
1929	State Ex Rel. Fletcher v. Executive Council	223 N.W. 737	56
1917	Fulton v. Fulton†	179 Iowa 948	50
1909	Moran v. Moran· Dissent†	144 Iowa 451	50
1922	Messenger v. Carroll Trust & Savings Bank†	193 Iowa 608	47
1909	Fitter v. Iowa Telephone Co.· Dissent†	143 Iowa 689	46
1911	Dolph v. Cross†	153 Iowa 289	45
1926	McCornack v. Central State Bank· Dissent	211 N.W. 542	43
1913	Knight v. Moline, East Moline & Watertown Railway Co.†	160 Iowa 160	42
1923	Grout v. Kendall†	195 Iowa 467	40
1920	City of Osceola v. Board of Equalization†	188 Iowa 278	36
1934	State v. Kriechbaum	258 N.W. 110	35
1933	Shenkle v. Mains	247 N.W. 635	35

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,841 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 Superior Court of California, County of Orange reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was William D. Evans on?: William D. Evans was a Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Orange.

Sources

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10 years on the Superior Court of California, County of Orange. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).