Sedgwick County judge to sit with Supreme Court

TOPEKA—Sedgwick County District Judge Joseph Bribiesca has been appointed to sit with the state Supreme Court Tuesday, January 29, to hear oral arguments in a review of a Court of Appeals decision affirming the dismissal of a Lyon County personal injury case.

The Supreme Court appointed Judge Bribiesca to join them for the appeal in place of Justice Marla Luckert. Judge Bribiesca will hear oral arguments in Appeal No. 102,662: Adam Simmons v. Richard W. Porter and Sarah M. Porter, doing business as Porter Farms, and then participate in the high court deliberations and opinion drafting.

Judge Bribiesca will join the Court to review an appeals court decision affirming the Lyon County District Court's grant of the Porter Farms' motion for summary judgment in a suit arising from a farm shop accident in which Simmons was severely burned. Simmons sued Richard and Sarah Porter, doing business as Porter Farms, contending Porter Farms was negligent by failing to provide him with a reasonably safe workplace.

Simmons was burned and permanently injured when a shop light fell and ignited gasoline that had been spilled during his removal of a fuel tank from a truck he had been working on. Simmons contends the district court improperly applied the assumption of risk doctrine in granting summary judgment to Porter Farms.

Judge Bribiesca has been on the Sedgwick County bench since 1994. Prior to becoming a district court judge, Bribiesca served 14 years as the Maize Municipal Court Judge, while maintaining a private law practice that began in 1977, upon his graduation from the Washburn University School of Law. A graduate of the Wichita State University with a BA in Spanish, he also holds an Associate of Arts degree from Hutchinson Community College.

During his career in private practice, Judge Bribiesca also served as a prosecutor for the cities of Mulvane and Wichita, as a guardian ad litem and judge pro tem in the Sedgwick County Juvenile Court and as a prosecutor for parental severance litigation in the legal department of the former Social and Rehabilitation Services.