Missouri Lawyers Awards 2024: Mark Emison

Partner, Langdon & Emison, Lexington

Mark Emison’s legal career comes down to one core thing — fighting for family. For him, that means remembering the impact of his father and wanting to be a force for good. Pro bono advocacy for allegedly wrongfully convicted inmate Michael Politte makes him a contender for the Legal Champion Award.

Emison’s cases usually involve defective products, trucking accidents, road construction defects, propane explosions and wrongful death. Beginning in the 1990s, the firm started to earn a reputation for work concerning product liability, specifically fire and fuel-fed fires.
Politte was convicted of the murder of his mother Rita, a fire case, in part due to evidence of an accelerant and gasoline on his shoes.

Emison worked with the Midwest Innocence Project and has spoken publicly about how the fire investigator violated gold standards of fire investigation. Emison and the team are seeking full exoneration. Politte was paroled in 2022.

“One of the major highlights of my career, just seeing Michael Politte walk out of prison. He was 14 when this happened. To see him come out in his late 30s and be able to start building his life outside of incarceration was one of the highlights that I’ll never forget,” Emison says.

Also in 2023, a wrongful death suit stemming from a man being killed by a stray wheel coming off a tractor trailer resulted in a $16 million settlement. Mark worked the case with his father, J. Kent Emison, the firm’s founder and a big influence. Mark has been with his firm nearly all his life, rising up from the copy room to being a partner.

Mark was also selected by AAJ’s Trial magazine earlier this year as the featured author on seat back defects. He is active in MATA and also the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Foundation and KCMBA, where he has served in numerous leadership roles and is well liked on both sides of the aisle.

“Believe in the cause and believe in what you’re doing. There’s a saying that there’s no small case to your client. The case is always the most important case in the world,” Emison says.