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 1986 / Served to 2017

William R. McGuiness

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

William R. McGuiness was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1986. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1986–2017 · 31 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1986	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2002	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, McGuiness authored 108 published opinions for the court (1996–2017). Most cited: Howard v. Owens Corning (330 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. 28 of these were attributed to McGuiness 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
1999	Howard v. Owens Corning	85 Cal. Rptr. 2d 386	330
1998	Fireman's Fund Insurance v. Maryland Casualty Co.†	65 Cal. App. 4th 1279	275
2001	People v. Branch	109 Cal. Rptr. 2d 870	235
2005	Peregrine Funding, Inc. v. Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP	35 Cal. Rptr. 3d 31	232
2007	People v. Brown	54 Cal. Rptr. 3d 887	228
1999	City of Atascadero v. Merill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc.	80 Cal. Rptr. 2d 329	205
2000	People v. Jennings	97 Cal. Rptr. 2d 727	186
1998	Sangster v. Paetkau	80 Cal. Rptr. 2d 66	182
2008	Amaral v. Cintas Corp. No. 2	163 Cal. App. 4th 1157	181
1998	Morey v. Vannucci	64 Cal. App. 4th 904	136
2000	Ringler Associates Inc. v. Maryland Casualty Co.	96 Cal. Rptr. 2d 136	131
2000	Eben-King v. King†	80 Cal. App. 4th 92	129
1996	People v. Tom Cheng Hsang Liu	46 Cal. App. 4th 1119	128
2001	People v. Hutchins	109 Cal. Rptr. 2d 643	124
2001	People v. Dieguez	107 Cal. Rptr. 2d 160	117

Showing the 15 most-cited of 108 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 William R. McGuiness on?: William R. McGuiness was a Presiding 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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31 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).