The POWER List: Heidi Doerhoff Vollet

Cook, Vetter, Doerhoff & Landwehr, Jefferson City

Utility workers don’t have free reign to use land when laying telecommunications lines. Heidi Doerhoff Vollet has gone to bat for landowners who suffered from such trespassing.

In 2018, the Jefferson City-based attorney reached a $24.7 million settlement in a suit against Sho-Me Power Electric Cooperative and Sho-Me Technologies. The settlement was the third-largest of the year as tracked by Missouri Lawyers Media.

And in 2020, she achieved a $6.5 million settlement for landowners who made similar claims against Central Electric Power Cooperative and its telecommunications company, FiberPath Technologies.

Vollet began her career clerking for Judge John R. Gibson of the 8^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and then for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist at the U.S. Supreme Court. In addition to her years of private practice, she also served as counsel to chief deputy in the Missouri Attorney General’s Office for four years.

She serves on the Missouri Supreme Court’s Approved Instructions Committee and the Federal Practice Committee for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri. She also is an officer and director of the 8th Circuit Bar Association.

Vollet earned her law degree from the University of Missouri in 2000.