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 2010 / Active

Gary D. Witt

Judge, Missouri Court of Appeals

Gary D. Witt is a Judge of the Missouri Court of Appeals (35 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), serving since 2010. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Kern. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2010 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	Superior Court of California, County of Kern	–	–
2010	Missouri Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Rutgers University-New Brunswick
University of Miami

Judicial Record

In our data, Witt authored 426 published opinions for the court (2010–2025), plus 2 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Peel v. Credit Acceptance Corp. (42 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. 180 of these were attributed to Witt 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
2013	Peel v. Credit Acceptance Corp.†	408 S.W.3d 191	42
2012	McGuire v. Kenoma, LLC†	375 S.W.3d 157	41
2010	Angus v. Second Injury Fund†	328 S.W.3d 294	41
2012	Rouse v. CUVELIER†	363 S.W.3d 406	36
2015	Joe Frazier v. City of Kansas City, Missouri	467 S.W.3d 327	32
2012	Hays v. State†	360 S.W.3d 304	32
2015	Kevin M. Higgins and Sue E. Higgins v. Abigail J. Ferrari and Emmitt F. Smith	474 S.W.3d 630	30
2015	Kacie Nickel v. Stephens College	480 S.W.3d 390	30
2017	State v. Escobar†	523 S.W.3d 545	28
2012	State v. Brightman†	388 S.W.3d 192	28
2011	Gerlt v. State†	339 S.W.3d 578	27
2011	Kline v. City of Kansas City†	334 S.W.3d 632	27
2012	Bailey v. Hawthorn Bank†	382 S.W.3d 84	25
2015	Thomas Wilmes and Sharon Wilmes v. Consumers Oil Company of Maryville	473 S.W.3d 705	24
2015	State of Missouri v. Gregory Robinson, Sr.	454 S.W.3d 428	24

Showing the 15 most-cited of 430 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 D. Witt on?: Gary D. Witt is a Judge of the Missouri Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

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16 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).