27 May 2025

ST. LOUIS – Interested citizens are invited to attend a special docket of the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, when Division One hears oral argument in five cases at 9:30 a.m. June 3, 2025. The docket will be held in the court’s former home in the James R. Reinhard Ceremonial Courtroom on the 12th Floor of the Clyde S. Cahill Courts Building, 10 North Tucker, in St. Louis. Named after the late Judge Reinhard, who served on the court of appeals from 1977 to 1997, the courtroom is now known as the En Banc Courtroom, where the 22nd Judicial Circuit Court meets regularly. The June 3 court sessions are open to the public. 

This special docket continues a tradition of the Eastern District convening court outside of the Old Post Office in downtown St. Louis, where the court regularly conducts its sessions. 

“The Eastern District is pleased to conduct a docket at its former residence, in the James R. Reinhard Ceremonial Courtroom within the previously known Civil Courts Building, and where Missouri’s first appellate court was located for 50 years following the building dedication on June 21, 1930 until 1981,” Chief Judge Thomas C. Clark II said. “Both this Court and generations of St. Louis legal families can identify some form of previous contact with this venerable building. For example, the Honorable Robert G. Dowd Sr. served with distinction on the Eastern District from 1969 to 1990, and his three sons served or currently serve as state trial or appellate court jurists. Appointed to the Eastern District in 2015, his son, the Honorable James M. Dowd, will preside over the upcoming June 3 docket and oral arguments in the same courthouse where his father presided as both a circuit and appellate court judge decades earlier. Recognizing the significance of this building and its vital role of preserving justice within the St. Louis region, the Eastern District welcomes the opportunity to return to its roots.”.

The five cases on the docket will be heard by five different panels of three judges. Two judges from the Court of Appeals – Judge Angela Turner Quigless and Judge James M. Dowd – will sit on all five cases, but the third judge’s duties on each case will be fulfilled by five different special judges. Three of them are from the 22nd Judicial Circuit: Judge Christopher E. McGraugh, Judge Craig K. Higgins and Judge Madeline O. Connolly. Two are from the 21st Judicial Circuit in St. Louis County: Judge Lorne J. Baker and Judge Thomas C. Albus. 

Quigless was appointed in 2012 after serving the city of St. Louis as a circuit judge, an associate circuit judge, an assistant city counselor and an assistant circuit attorney. Dowd was appointed in 2015 after practicing law in St. Louis at Dowd & Dowd and then at his own firm. McGraugh was appointed in 2015 after serving as an associate circuit judge and assistant public defender. Higgins was appointed in 2022 after serving as an associate circuit judge and an associate city counselor. Connolly was appointed in 2019 after serving as an associate circuit judge, an assistant circuit attorney and in private practice. Baker was appointed in 2024 after serving as an associate circuit judge and as an administrative law judge. Albus was appointed in 2020 after serving as first assistant attorney general, a federal prosecutor and in private practice.

The Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, is the state’s largest appellate court, with offices in the historic Old Post Office in downtown St. Louis. The court regularly hears cases in St. Louis, Hannibal, Cape Girardeau and other locations in the Eastern District.

Contact: Morgan Coleman, clerk of the court

Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District

(314) 539-4300