Missouri Lawyers Media Missouri legal news and public notices

Nine years after he was tasered in his home by a police officer delivering a parking ticket, a Hermann truck driver has been awarded $650,000 by a federal jury in St. Louis — including half a million dollars in punitive damages.

A Phelps County jury determined that a 73-year-old Rolla woman injured in a collision with a tractor-trailer on Interstate 44 was 75 percent responsible, awarding her less than $11,000 after a six-figure demand on the morning of trial. 

A Kansas jury rejected an attempt to hold a popular Lawrence bar responsible for the 2018 death of a 61-year-old woman visiting her son as part of an unofficial University of Kansas “Mom’s weekend.”

A Troy woman injured in a 2019 two-car collision while a passenger in her mother’s vehicle has settled a Lincoln County lawsuit against the other driver for $100,000.

A former assistant county counselor in St. Charles County reached a settlement of more than $400,000 in a sexual harassment lawsuit alleging a years-long effort by a now-retired county police chief whose workplace misconduct, she said, was both well-known and ignored by other top county officials.

Kansas City Municipal Judge Courtney Wachal presides over a daily domestic violence docket that recently had grown to nearly 350 cases in one day, as the court continued to work through its COVID-19 backlog.

For Jody Stockard, the path to receiving a Women’s Justice Award for public service began at the University of Missouri School of Journalism — the undergraduate alma mater for a quarter of this year’s honorees in this category.

A career prosecutor before her 2018 election to the bench, Circuit Judge Kate Schaefer now presides over a range of civil and criminal cases from the St. Joseph-based circuit.

Some lawyers crave the spotlight.

Adjusting to recent retirement after more than three decades of donning the black robe —including more than a quarter-century with the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District — admittedly remains a work in progress for Mary Kathryn Hoff.

Long before the pandemic elevated “work from home” into the everyday vernacular, Jennifer Growcock faced a career crossroads.