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 1965 / Served to 1970

Sam Blair

Judge, Missouri Court of Appeals

Sam Blair was a Judge of the Missouri Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1965. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1965–1970 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1965	Missouri Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Blair authored 79 published opinions for the court (1940–1967), plus 2 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Bridle Trail Association v. O'SHANICK (38 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. 8 of these were attributed to Blair 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
1956	Bridle Trail Association v. O'SHANICK	290 S.W.2d 401	38
1955	John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. Dawson	278 S.W.2d 57	34
1967	Kansas City v. Howe	416 S.W.2d 683	33
1955	Hribernik v. Reorganized School District R-3	276 S.W.2d 596	32
1943	Wilhoit v. City of Springfield· Concurrence	171 S.W.2d 95	28
1967	Rutlader v. Rutlader	411 S.W.2d 826	26
1960	Ladue Contracting Co. v. Land Development Co.	337 S.W.2d 578	26
1957	MacK Motor Truck Corporation v. Wolfe	303 S.W.2d 697	26
1967	Stegall v. Wilson	416 S.W.2d 658	20
1966	Hogsett v. Hogsett	409 S.W.2d 232	20
1955	Lemasters v. Willman	281 S.W.2d 580	17
1967	Bryant v. Montgomery Ward & Company	416 S.W.2d 195	16
1966	State v. McClary	399 S.W.2d 597	16
1954	Bidleman v. Morrison Motor Freight, Inc.	273 S.W.2d 745	16
1967	Butler v. Manley	416 S.W.2d 680	15

Showing the 15 most-cited of 84 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 Sam Blair on?: Sam Blair 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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5 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).