In Missouri the Circuit Court is the highest trial-level court. It deals with cases involving larger amounts of money than those in lower trial courts, and it has exclusive jurisdiction to hear certain types of cases.
The procedures in Circuit Court are more complex than in lower trial courts, with the result that Circuit Court cases usually take longer to resolve than those in the lower trial courts. Circuit Court cases generally require six to 18 months to resolve, although very complex cases can take even longer.
With very limited exceptions, corporations and most other organizations must be represented in Circuit Court by an attorney. Although individuals have the right to represent themselves in Circuit Court, the more complex procedures make it very difficult to do so successfully. There are numerous procedural deadlines to be met, legal arguments to be made, and rules of evidence to abide by.
After a lawsuit and summons is served on the defendant in a Circuit Court case, the defendant has 30 days within which to file a written response. Sometimes the response is a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on technical grounds, but more often the response is a pleading (a legal document filed in court) called an “answer.” The purpose of an answer is to let the court and plaintiff know what issues are in dispute so everyone can focus on those issues. Any allegation in the plaintiff’s petition which is admitted by the defendant does not have to be proved by the plaintiff; conversely, allegations denied by the defendant will have to be proved by the plaintiff. In preparing an answer, the defendant is legally required to admit those allegations of the petition which the defendant knows to be true, but is entitled to deny allegations which the defendant in good faith believes to be false or about which the defendant does not have sufficient knowledge.
Once the factual and legal issues in the lawsuit have been clarified by the filing of an answer, typically the next step in a Circuit Court lawsuit is to conduct discovery. Discovery techniques are outlined above in the court system overview.
When a party to a Circuit Court lawsuit is ready for trial, usually after completing its investigation and discovery, the party can ask the court for a trial date. If the other party or parties are not ready, they can respond by asking the court to postpone a trial setting for a specified period of time. In Boone County, most Circuit Court civil cases are set for trial within three months after a request is made. However, because the Boone County Circuit Court is very busy, the court typically sets a number of cases (as many as ten) on the same day, assigning each case as a first setting, second setting, etc. The court does this because it knows from experience that some 90% of civil cases are settled before trial and that available trial dates would be wasted if only one trial were scheduled per day. Sometimes two or more cases set for trial on the same day are not settled, however, in which event the court usually tries the unsettled case that was assigned the highest priority setting and reschedules the other cases, either later the same day or on another future date. If a case is thus “bumped” to a future date, the court tries to assign it a first setting the next time.
In some Circuit Cases the parties are entitled by law to a jury trial, and the rule is that the court will try the case with the jury unless both parties specifically waive a jury. In other cases, the parties are not entitled to a jury trial and must accept trial by the judge – a good example is dissolution of marriage cases.
Appeals are available in almost all Circuit Court cases. The Missouri Court of Appeals hears most of these appeals. In rare cases, usually involving constitutional issues or matters relating to Missouri’s tax laws, appeals can be filed directly with the Missouri Supreme Court.
As might be expected, given the more complicated nature of litigation in Circuit Court, such cases usually are more expensive than cases in lower trial courts. If a client is paying an attorney on an hourly fee basis, the process of filing, preparing and trying a Circuit Court case can easily cost $5,000 to $10,000, with complicated cases potentially costing several times that amount. Additional costs and expenses may be incurred for expert witnesses, among whom physicians are typically the most expensive. Therefore, parties to a civil lawsuit in the Circuit Court need to make a careful assessment of the merits of pursuing the litigation and balance that against the anticipated costs of litigation.