Los Angeles Appellate Justices
Appellate Justices Who Hear Appeals From Los Angeles County
These pages are a repository of the justices of the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, whose divisions hear appeals and writ petitions from the Los Angeles County Superior Court. For each justice they provide the official biography link and, as the section grows, links to published opinions in which that justice dissented, with a short neutral note on what the majority held.
A Note on Method
Appellate courts speak through majority opinions, which must express the view of the panel. A separately written dissent speaks for its author alone. In my experience, that is why dissents are often where a justice explains his or her own reasoning most directly — the treatment of precedent, the reading of a statute, the weight given to procedure.
There is also a practical reason these pages exist. A brief has to be written before the panel is set, so there is no way to write toward the three justices who will actually decide the case. By the time of oral argument, the panel is public, and reviewing what the assigned justices have said when they disagreed with a majority is one useful way to anticipate what a particular bench is likely to press on.
These pages collect opinions in which each justice dissented, with a short neutral note on what the majority held, and link to the full opinions so that readers can draw their own conclusions. A dissent is not controlling authority regardless of whether the underlying opinion was published, and nothing here predicts how any justice will decide a future case.
A small number of the opinions linked below are unpublished, meaning the Court of Appeal did not certify them for publication in the Official Reports; California Rule of Court 8.1115 does not permit an unpublished opinion to be cited or relied on by a court or a party in any other action, and these pages do not suggest otherwise. An unpublished dissent is included here for the same reason a published one is: it shows how the dissenting justice reasoned on a real case, which can be useful in spotting a pattern even where it carries no legal weight. Every unpublished opinion on these pages is marked as such next to the case name.
Some judges rarely write separately; where no dissenting opinion has been identified for a judge, these pages say so rather than imply that one exists.
Thomas Ogden, Esq.
Certified Specialist in Appellate Law
State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization
How Los Angeles Appeals Reach These Justices
Appeals from the Los Angeles County Superior Court that fall within Court of Appeal jurisdiction are assigned among Divisions One through Five, Seven, and Eight of the Second Appellate District, all sitting in Los Angeles. Each case is decided by a randomly selected panel of three justices from the division to which it is assigned; no division is assigned exclusively to particular kinds of Los Angeles cases, and no justice can be predicted to sit on a particular appeal.
The Roster
Justices of the Second Appellate District Who Hear Appeals From Los Angeles County
How These Pages Are Maintained
The roster page states the date on which the court's composition was last verified against the court's own list of justices, and records vacancies and pending appointments factually. Court composition changes through appointment, retirement, and elevation, and superior court judges and retired judges sit by assignment when seats are vacant. No biography is drawn from any source other than the court's official biography, and no dissent is summarized or characterized.
Using this website or submitting a conflict check does not create an attorney-client relationship and does not extend, suspend, stay, or otherwise affect any legal, trial-court, appellate, or other deadline or proceeding.