The POWER List: Michael Ketchmark

Staff Report//June 28, 2021//

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Ketchmark & McCreight, Kansas City

Michael Ketchmark has one of the biggest trial victories in Missouri history to his name: a $2.2 billion verdict in 2002 for a woman whose cancer drugs were diluted by Kansas City pharmacist Robert Courtney.
In 2018, he won $28.8 million for a doctor who was fired after he raised safety concerns regarding emergency room staffing at Kansas City-area hospitals. That same year, he achieved a $74.1 million verdict against Ford Motor Company for an accident that killed a man in the company’s Claycomo plant.
At the end of the latter case, Ketchmark was able to make a rare deposit of $10 million from the case’s punitive damages award into Missouri’s Tort Victims’ Compensation Fund, which uses portions of final punitive awards to compensate tort victims who are unable to otherwise obtain full redress for their injuries.
Ketchmark is a 1990 graduate of the University of Iowa College of Law.