A Missouri appellate court blocked a judge’s order that denied an underlying suit be assigned to a new jurist, concluding the request wasn’t barred by a prior venue change.
On April 11, the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Southern District blocked Greene County Circuit Judge Derek Ankrom from taking further action in the case, other than to order the mandatory change of judge. The relators, Rudy Tapia and Douglas Rogers, claim their request for a new judicial assignment under Missouri Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 51.05 was wrongly denied after the case was transferred from Miller County to the Greene County court. Tapia and Rogers filed a writ of prohibition to the state appellate court, requesting that Ankrom be prohibited from overseeing the case, arguing that the jurisdictional changes do not also preclude them from changing judges. Ankrom argued that Tapia and Rogers were precluded from requesting a judicial change because they had already exhausted their rights by filing the Rule 51.045 motion to transfer venue.