The POWER List: Michael L. Blumenthal

Seyferth Blumenthal & Harris, Kansas City

Mike Blumenthal is the kind of defense attorney you don’t want to mess with, in or out of court: He’s practiced both law and martial arts since earning his law degree from the University of Kansas in 1992.

In 2017, he persuaded the Missouri Supreme Court to resolve a procedural mess in the way employment-discrimination cases are filed. And in 2018 he won a first-impression ruling in the Kansas Supreme Court involving that state’s statute of frauds.

In a case before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Blumenthal prevailed twice on behalf of the University of Missouri-Kansas City in a suit by a part-time lecturer who alleged his contract wasn’t renewed because he’d criticized the preferential treatment of student-athletes. The appeals court ruled in 2015 that the individual defendants deserved qualified immunity and reached the same conclusion two years later after the plaintiff amended his suit.

The law firm typically represents corporate clients in single-plaintiff, employment-discrimination cases, though Blumenthal and his colleagues perhaps are best known for their years-long litigation on behalf of the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City, which ended in a $188 million settlement. Blumenthal is an elected fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and a past president of the Society for Human Resource Management of Johnson County, Kansas.