In most elections, voters have shortcuts for evaluating candidates. There’s a party label, a campaign, a platform. Judicial elections offer few of these. Candidates are often nonpartisan, their experience can be difficult to evaluate without legal expertise, and in retention elections, like those California holds for appellate justices, they have no opponents, only a yes-or-no vote.
On November 3, California voters will decide whether to retain 15 justices of the Fourth District Court of Appeal. But beyond their biographies and professional backgrounds, what can voters actually learn about the judges on their ballots?
State trial court records offer another perspective, revealing how judges have handled cases, ruled on motions, and managed litigation. To explore what these records can tell us, we used Trellis to examine the career of one of those justices, William S. Dato.
The information gap in judicial elections
In most elections, voters rely on shortcuts to evaluate candidates. Researchers call these voting cues.
A 2012 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research examined the role of these cues in judicial elections across 39 states from 1990 to 2010. It found that party labels strongly influenced voting, with their absence reducing both partisan voting and participation. Turnout in judicial races fell from 83 percent in contested partisan elections to 76 percent in nonpartisan elections and 67 percent in retention elections.
Yet retention elections overwhelmingly favored incumbents. Across 6,505 retention elections, judges averaged 74 percent “yes” votes, and only 39 lost. In California, the average was 70 percent, and no justice received less than 52 percent. According to a state analysis cited by LAist, no California appellate justice has lost a retention election since the system began in the 1930s.
These outcomes raise an important question: What can voters learn by looking beyond a judge’s biography and examining their record?
State trial court records offer one place to start. While evaluating a judge’s legal reasoning requires legal expertise, court records can reveal how judges have managed cases, ruled on motions, and handled litigation compared with their peers.
The Hon. William S. Dato’s career offers a case study in what those records can tell us.
Who is Judge William Dato?
Born and raised in San Diego, Dato studied political science and economics at San Diego State University before completing a J.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law.
His legal career has spanned appellate courts, private practice, and the trial bench. He began in 1980 as a research attorney for California Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Bird, Justice Matthew O. Tobriner, and California Court of Appeal Justice Howard B. Wiener.
In 1982, Dato entered private practice at Milberg Weiss, a firm frequently appearing in Trellis court records as plaintiff-side counsel in securities, shareholder, and consumer class actions.
He returned to the California Court of Appeal in 1984 as a research attorney for Justice Wiener, spending the next decade in appellate chambers before rejoining Milberg Weiss.
After another decade in private practice, Dato was appointed to the San Diego County Superior Court by Governor Gray Davis in 2003. Governor Jerry Brown subsequently appointed him to the California Court of Appeal in 2017.
What did he do on the trial bench?
Dato spent 14 years as a trial judge, and Trellis provides a window into that experience through records from 2,170 cases, nearly all filed between 2009 and 2013.
Most were everyday civil disputes. About 40 percent involved torts, including injury and negligence claims, while 24 percent involved commercial disputes and 15 percent involved debt collections. Few reached trial. Approximately 74 percent ended in dismissal, 9.5 percent in default judgment, typically because the defendant never responded, and just 3.6 percent reached a verdict.
These outcomes reflect an important reality of civil litigation: most cases never reach trial. How judges handle motions and manage litigation can therefore be just as revealing as the verdicts they oversee.
That’s where Dato’s record becomes particularly interesting.
According to Trellis Judge Analytics, Dato granted motions to dismiss approximately 21 percentage points less often than the statewide average, based on 29 orders. His summary judgment grant rate was close to the statewide average, while his overall motion grant rate was slightly higher.
Although the sample is limited, his lower dismissal rate suggests that cases before him may have been more likely to proceed beyond the early stages of litigation. However, these differences alone cannot establish his judicial philosophy or explain the reasoning behind individual rulings.
Trellis also has verdict records for eight cases Dato oversaw, including auto accidents, medical malpractice, and employment disputes. Five ended in defense verdicts and three in awards to plaintiffs, including an $85,000 award in Belles v. Williams.
While the sample is too small to draw broad conclusions, these outcomes add another dimension to his trial court record. They also illustrate why examining motions, rulings, and verdicts together provides a more complete picture of a judge’s experience than a biography alone.
How does he compare with the other justices on the ballot?
So far, we’ve examined Dato’s trial court record. But how does his professional background compare with those of the other justices seeking retention?
We compared Dato with the 14 other justices appearing on the California Fourth District Court of Appeal’s retention ballot. Using their biographies on Trellis, we examined their professional experience before joining the bench and the governors who appointed them.
Seven of the 15 spent substantial portions of their careers as prosecutors, while one, Joanne Motoike, worked as a public defender. Five came from civil or private practice, including Dato, and two from government or administrative work. Six had experience working in appellate courts before becoming judges, whether as clerks or staff attorneys.
Dato spent approximately 12 years as an appellate research attorney, compared with seven years for Nathan Scott. Dato and Julia Kelety have both served as judges since 2003.
These backgrounds illustrate the range of professional experience represented among the justices on the ballot, from criminal prosecution and defense to civil litigation and appellate research.
But professional experience is only part of the picture. In California, governors appoint appellate justices, who subsequently face voters in retention elections.
Thirteen of the 15 justices were appointed to their Court of Appeal seats by Gavin Newsom, while two, Dato and Michael Raphael, were appointed by Jerry Brown. All 15 received their appellate appointments from Democratic governors.
While appointing governors provide additional historical context, those appointments alone do not establish how individual justices approach cases or make decisions.
What a voter can do with this
Unlike other elections, judicial elections give voters few familiar cues for evaluating candidates. But a judicial biography is only one part of a judge’s professional record.
State trial court data offers another perspective. Through Trellis, voters, attorneys, and researchers can examine how judges have handled cases, ruled on motions, and managed litigation. They can also explore attorneys’ litigation histories and compare available records across judges and jurisdictions.
And accessing this information doesn’t require a legal background. With Trellis Chat, anyone can ask questions in plain language about judges, cases, motions, and rulings. Trellis also offers MCP connectors for ChatGPT and Claude, bringing state trial court research into the tools people already use.
These records have limitations. They cannot, on their own, establish whether a judge’s legal reasoning was sound or whether individual decisions were correct. But they provide additional context about a judge’s professional experience and the cases they’ve overseen.
By making state trial court data accessible and searchable, Trellis helps bring greater visibility to judicial records that might otherwise be difficult to examine.
A biography tells you where a judge has worked. Court records can show you what happened in their courtroom.
FAQ
Start with the judge’s official biography, which typically includes their education, professional experience, and judicial appointments. You can also examine their judicial record to learn more about the cases they’ve handled and their past rulings. Trellis provides access to state trial court records, including cases, motions, rulings, and litigation outcomes, offering additional context beyond a judge’s biography.
In a judicial retention election, voters decide whether a sitting judge or justice should remain in office. A “yes” vote supports retaining the judge for another term, while a “no” vote opposes retention. Unlike contested judicial elections, retention elections do not feature competing candidates. California uses retention elections for its Supreme Court and Courts of Appeal.
You can research a judge’s past rulings through court websites, publicly available case records, and legal research platforms. Trellis makes state trial court rulings searchable, allowing users to examine how judges have ruled on motions, including motions to dismiss and motions for summary judgment. Users can also compare available motion outcomes across judges to identify patterns in their historical records.
William S. Dato is a justice on California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal. His official judicial biography provides information about his education, legal career, and appointments. Trellis also provides access to records from his time on the San Diego County Superior Court, including civil cases, motion rulings, and verdicts. These records offer additional insight into his experience as a trial judge before joining the appellate court in 2017.
Yes. Trellis offers MCP connectors that bring state trial court research into ChatGPT and Claude. Once connected, users can ask questions in plain language about judges, cases, motions, and rulings using Trellis’s court data. You can connect Trellis to ChatGPT or Claude or use Trellis Chat, Trellis’s legal research platform, to ask questions and explore court records.
Trial court judges oversee cases as they move through litigation, including hearings, motions, trials, and other proceedings. Appellate justices review decisions made by lower courts to determine whether legal errors occurred. In California, Superior Courts serve as trial courts, while the Courts of Appeal review appeals from those courts. William S. Dato served on the San Diego County Superior Court before his appointment to the Fourth District Court of Appeal in 2017.