Rule 78.03.Order Granting New Trial Shall Specify Grounds.

Rule 78.03 requires transparency at the moment a new trial is ordered. It is not enough for a judge to grant the motion without more. The order must specify, on the record, the ground or grounds behind the decision.

This requirement matters for the parties and for any later appeal. Both sides need to know exactly why the case is being retried, whether that is an evidentiary problem, an instructional error, or something else covered under Rule 78.01's good-cause standard. A clearly stated ground also lets an appellate court evaluate whether granting the new trial was the correct call, since review would otherwise have to guess at the reasoning behind the order.

The official comment identifies this requirement as carrying forward language from the last sentence of a prior version of the new-trial rule, confirming that stating grounds of record has long been part of Missouri's new-trial practice instead of a recent procedural add-on. It pairs directly with Rule 78.02's limit on repeat new trials for the weight-of-the-evidence ground — a court cannot apply that limit consistently unless its earlier orders clearly identify which ground was used.