The POWER List 2023: Leland Dempsey

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Dempsey Kingsland Osteen, Kansas City

Leland Dempsey represents people who experience treatment that leaves them worse than before.

In 2017, Dempsey and Michael Manners represented the family of a woman who died because a pharmacy prescribed her the wrong medication. An appeals court allowed a new trial to determine damages for aggravating circumstances, and they secured the family a confidential settlement two years later.

Dempsey also has represented people injured by bad reactions to immunizations. They qualify for a federal law that compensates people for vaccine-related injuries while protecting vaccine makers from liability.

In 2006, he secured a $43.1 million award for a 7-year-old boy injured by a vaccine as an infant. In 2015, he represented a former mayor of a Clay County city who suffered severe brain damage from an adverse immunization reaction and won a $7.4 million settlement. A Cass County woman recovered a $1.74 million settlement as his client after an annual flu vaccine caused a rare neurological disorder.

Dempsey earned his law degree from Tulane Law School in 1982.