Frank Kellogg Richardson (February 13, 1914 – October 5, 1999) was an American attorney and Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court.

[1] Wearing his US Army uniform and using identification papers from the U.S. Embassy, Richardson talked his way through multiple layers of security and was escorted to a seat in the Distinguished Visitors Gallery next to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In October 1971, Governor Reagan appointed Richardson Presiding Justice of the California Third District Court of Appeal.

[10] Among his 182 majority opinions, Richardson wrote the court's opinions in Daly v. General Motors Corp. (1978) 20 Cal.3d 725, applying comparative fault principles to actions brought in strict product liability; Amador Valley Joint Union High School District v. State Board of Equalization (1978) 22 Cal.3d 208, upholding Proposition 13, the initiative that changed California's property taxation system; Agins v. City of Tiburon (1979) 24 Cal.3d 266, denying the constitutional remedy of just compensations to Property owners alleging uncompensated regulatory takings of their land (overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court in First English etc.

Church v. County of Los Angeles (1987) 482 U.S. 304), People v. Scott (1978) 21 Cal.3d 284, outlining the outer limits of searches and seizures of physical evidence from criminal defendants; and Brosnahan v. Eu (1982) 31 Cal.3d 1, upholding Proposition 8, the Victims' Bill of Rights initiative.

3d 880 (1979), in which he articulated a conservative, strict constructionist theory of statutory interpretation with regard to the question of when a court could find an implied cause of action to enforce a statute.

Richardson reasoned that the courts should not imply a private right to sue simply because the legislature had declared certain acts by insurers to constitute unfair claims handling; in his view, the more rational approach was that the legislature's silence on the issue meant it had no intent to create such a right, and in turn, the courts must defer to that decision.

He attacked the majority opinion (signed by Stanley Mosk) for judicial activism in making it much easier to sue insurance companies.

& Prof. Code, § 17070), to point out that 'the Legislature was fully capable of writing an unambiguous statute creating civil liability for particular unfair business practices.

'[11]Richardson unsuccessfully attempted to convince his fellow justices to move the Supreme Court from its traditional headquarters in San Francisco to Sacramento, the state's capital city.

Then, President Reagan appointed Richardson as solicitor to the U.S. Department of the Interior,[4] which was headed at the time by fellow former California Supreme Court Justice William Clark.