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 1985 / Served to 1993

William M. Wunderlich

Justice, California Court of Appeal

William M. Wunderlich was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1985. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1946 · age 80
Tenure: 1985–1993 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Wunderlich authored 87 published opinions for the court (1993–2004). Most cited: People v. Campbell (208 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 of these was attributed to Wunderlich 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
1994	People v. Campbell	25 Cal. App. 4th 402	208
2003	MHC Operating Limited Partnership v. City of San Jose	130 Cal. Rptr. 2d 564	177
2003	Nguyen v. Calhoun	129 Cal. Rptr. 2d 436	135
1997	People v. Valdez	58 Cal. App. 4th 494	134
2001	In Re Nicholas B.	106 Cal. Rptr. 2d 465	112
1993	People v. Miranda	17 Cal. App. 4th 917	112
1996	People v. Aguilera	51 Cal. App. 4th 1151	106
2003	Van't Rood v. County of Santa Clara	6 Cal. Rptr. 3d 746	86
2001	People v. Coelho	107 Cal. Rptr. 2d 729	84
2001	Chavez v. Carpenter	111 Cal. Rptr. 2d 534	81
2002	Bono v. Clark	128 Cal. Rptr. 2d 31	79
2003	People Ex Rel. Kennedy v. Beaumont Investment, Ltd.	3 Cal. Rptr. 3d 429	67
2000	People v. Williams	92 Cal. Rptr. 2d 1	63
1997	Exxon Corp. v. Superior Court	51 Cal. App. 4th 1672	63
2003	In Re Smith	7 Cal. Rptr. 3d 655	60

Showing the 15 most-cited of 87 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 M. Wunderlich on?: William M. Wunderlich was a 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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8 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).