California Court of Appeal

The California courts of appeal are the state intermediate appellate courts in the U.S. state of California. The state is geographically divided into six appellate districts. The courts of appeal form the largest state-level intermediate appellate court system in the United States, with 105 justices.

The decisions of the courts of appeal are binding on the California superior courts, and both the courts of appeal and the superior courts are bound by the decisions of the Supreme Court of California. Notably, all published California appellate decisions are binding on all trial courts (distinct from the practice in the federal courts and in other state court systems in which trial courts are bound only by the appellate decisions from the particular circuit in which it sits, as well as the Supreme Court of the United States or the state supreme court). By way of contrast, "there is no horizontal stare decisis in the California Court of Appeal"; court of appeal decisions are not binding between divisions or even between panels of the same division.

Thus, all superior courts (and hence all litigants) are bound by the decision of a court of appeal if it is the only published California precedent that articulates a point of law relevant to a particular set of facts, even if the superior court would have decided differently if writing on a fresh slate. However, another court of appeal division or district may rule differently on that point of law after a litigant seeks relief from an adverse trial court ruling that faithfully applied existing precedent. In that instance, all superior courts are free to pick and choose which precedent they wish to follow until the state supreme court settles the issue for the entire state, although a superior court confronted with such a conflict will normally follow the view of its own court of appeal.

It is customary in federal courts and other state courts to indicate in case citations the particular circuit or district of an intermediate appellate court that issued the decision cited. But because the decisions of all six California appellate districts are equally binding upon all trial courts, district numbers are traditionally omitted in California citation style unless an actual interdistrict conflict is at issue.

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