Attorney John Torbitzky will succeed Judge Mary Kathryn Hoff on the Eastern District Court of Appeals.
Gov. Mike Parson announced Torbitzky’s appointment last week after considering a trio of candidates.
“He will sit with a panel of two other judges for the first time in October but he will not be responsible for writing those opinions in October,” said Sherri Sullivan, who is chief judge of the Eastern District of the Missouri Court of Appeals. “The first cases that he'll actually sit on, write opinions and be responsible for will be in November, which gives him a little bit of time to ease in.”
Torbitzky rose above two other candidates, Ellen S. Levy and Jeffery T. McPherson, with his well-rounded background, according to Judge Sullivan.
“He clerked for two years with Judge Fisher and then he worked with three major law firms where he got appellate experience with all of them before he started his own firm with a partner and, from looking at his application, he appeared for the appellants or respondents and argued cases for them. He did a lot of trial work and business litigation," she said. That's probably what attracted the commission and what attracted the governor to him.”
Zel Fisher is a justice of the Missouri Supreme Court.
As previously reported in the St. Louis Record, Torbitzky earned his bachelor of arts in English, cum laude with departmental honors, in 2007 from the University of Missouri-Columbia and his law degree, summa cum laude, in 2012 from Saint Louis University School of Law.
“One of the things I found impressive about John's application was that he talked about having been a clerk and understanding the importance of civility and respect for your fellow judges and that is important because you have to be willing to listen to each other and to hear out other opinions,” Sullivan told the St. Louis Record.
“The other thing he said in his application that I thought was apropos was his thinking that it’s important for all litigants to get fair treatment and that when you render an opinion, it's not just directed to the attorneys but also to the public so they can understand it if they read it.”