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The POWER List 2023: Craig S. O’Dear
Staff Report//May 10, 2023//
Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, Kansas City
Outside of his legal career, Craig O’Dear is probably best known for his 2018 run for U.S. Senate in Missouri as an independent candidate.
Within the legal community, he is known for both his international arbitration practice and his handling of high-profile cases. As a young lawyer, he represented 14 class-action defendants in a woman’s emotional-distress claim arising from the tragedy following the 1981 Hyatt Regency Skywalk collapse in Kansas City.
In the early 2000’s, he represented the WWE in litigation stemming from the death of Owen Hart, a wrestler who fell to his death from the rafters of Kemper Arena in 1999 as he was being lowered into the ring.
O’Dear is a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates and formerly served on the advisory board of the Midwest Innocence Project.
He earned his law degree in 1982 from Vanderbilt University.
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