How do judges of the Missouri Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Missouri Court of Appeals / Joined 2009 / Active

Gary M. Gaertner Jr.

Judge, Missouri Court of Appeals

Gary M. Gaertner Jr. is a Judge of the Missouri Court of Appeals, serving since 2009. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2009 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2009	Missouri Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Gaertner authored 1,064 published opinions for the court (1982–2025), plus 2 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Dixon (58 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. 141 of these were attributed to Gaertner 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
1983	State v. Dixon	655 S.W.2d 547	58
2010	Kunzie v. Jack-In-The-Box, Inc.· Concurrence†	330 S.W.3d 476	54
1994	Holmes v. Holmes	878 S.W.2d 906	52
1996	State v. Candela	929 S.W.2d 852	49
1995	21 West, Inc. v. Meadowgreen Trails, Inc.	913 S.W.2d 858	49
2000	Misischia v. St. John's Mercy Medical Center	30 S.W.3d 848	47
1984	Ford v. Bi-State Development Agency	677 S.W.2d 899	47
1983	Robbins v. Jewish Hospital of St. Louis	663 S.W.2d 341	45
1984	St. Louis Little Rock Hospital, Inc. v. Gaertner	682 S.W.2d 146	41
2011	State v. Floyd	347 S.W.3d 115	40
1991	State v. Lachterman	812 S.W.2d 759	40
1990	Thurston v. State	791 S.W.2d 893	40
1989	State v. Fraction	782 S.W.2d 764	40
1986	Grommet v. Grommet	714 S.W.2d 747	37
1984	Ohlendorf v. Feinstein	670 S.W.2d 930	37

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,068 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 Missouri Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is Gary M. Gaertner Jr. on?: Gary M. Gaertner Jr. is a Judge of the Missouri Court of Appeals.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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17 years on the Missouri Court of Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).