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 1991 / Served to 2013

James Smart

Judge, Missouri Court of Appeals

James Smart was a Judge of the Missouri Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1991. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1991–2013 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1991	Missouri Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Smart authored 497 published opinions for the court (1992–2013), plus 6 dissents and 25 concurrences. Most cited: Wulfing v. Kansas City Southern Industries, Inc. (84 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. 492 of these were attributed to Smart 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
1992	Wulfing v. Kansas City Southern Industries, Inc.	842 S.W.2d 133	84
2008	Morrow v. Hallmark Cards, Inc.†	273 S.W.3d 15	73
2008	Smith v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.· Dissent†	275 S.W.3d 748	66
1998	State Ex Rel. Chastain v. City of Kansas City†	968 S.W.2d 232	56
2007	ABB POWER T & D CO. v. Kempker†	236 S.W.3d 43	45
2011	Hope v. Nissan North America, Inc.†	353 S.W.3d 68	41
1996	Harris v. DeSisto	932 S.W.2d 435	40
1994	Ladish v. Gordon†	879 S.W.2d 623	38
2011	State Ex Rel. KCP & L Greater Missouri Operations Co. v. Cook· Concurrence†	353 S.W.3d 14	35
1999	State v. Wright· Concurrence†	998 S.W.2d 78	35
1999	Sloan v. Bankers Life & Casualty Co.†	1 S.W.3d 555	33
1999	Cade v. State, Department of Social Services†	990 S.W.2d 32	33
1995	Hedglin v. Stahl Specialty Co.· Concurrence†	903 S.W.2d 922	33
1999	Juvenile Officer v. S.W.J.†	11 S.W.3d 699	32
1992	Sinclair v. Sinclair	837 S.W.2d 355	32

Showing the 15 most-cited of 528 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 was James Smart on?: James Smart was 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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21 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).