ST. LOUIS — The Missouri Supreme Court has appointed a judge from the Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District to oversee Attorney General Andrew Bailey's motion to remove St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner from office.
John Torbitzky will preside over the quo warranto proceedings when they begin in St. Louis.
The state’s Supreme Court had to appoint a judge to the case after all 31 judges in the 22nd Judicial Circuit recused themselves from handling the case. That’s because all of them agreed they could be called as witnesses by Bailey, who lodged multiple allegations of malfeasance against Gardner in a petition Thursday.
Torbitzky graduated from St. Louis University Law School 10 years ago.
He clerked for Missouri Supreme Court Judge Zel Fischer until 2014, when he went into private practice.
Torbitzky was among the lawyers who landed a $2.1 billion verdict in a lawsuit claiming Johnson & Johnson’s talcum products caused nearly two dozen women's ovarian cancer, according to the Behr, McCarter & Potter PC firm’s website.
In 2018, Missouri Lawyer’s Media named Torbitzky one of its Up and Coming honorees. He told the publication he would likely have become a journalist or a teacher had he not pursued a career in law.
Gov. Mike Parson appointed Torbitzky, a St. Louis native, to the Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District in 2021.
In his petition seeking Gardner’s removal, Bailey asked the judge to immediately suspend Gardner from office while the case proceeded.
Torbitzky did not make any additional rulings or set any hearing dates by the end of Friday.