Similar personal injury attorneys in Kansas City
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
About David Skeens
David M. Skeens joined Davis, Bethune and Jones in 2025. He previously spent 24 years as a shareholder at a nationally recognized boutique trial firm, building a record of over $750 million in client recoveries across personal injury, class action, and commercial litigation in state and federal courts. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Economics from the University of Missouri in 1983, where he was on the Dean's List and served as president of Kappa Sigma Fraternity, and his J.D. with distinction from the University of Missouri Kansas City School of Law in 1988, graduating in the Order of Bench and Robe (top 10%) and serving on the Law Review.
Skeens is licensed in Missouri, Kansas, before the U.S. Supreme Court, and in the Third, Fifth, Eighth, and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals, as well as the Eastern, Western, and Southern Districts of Missouri and the District of Kansas. He holds an AV rating from Martindale-Hubbell, has been named a Super Lawyer in 2010 and continuously from 2017 through 2026, and received the Kansas City Business Journal Best of the Bar recognition in 2019. His notable verdicts include a $168 million settlement in U.S. Bank second mortgage litigation
- a $105 million jury verdict against predatory second mortgage lenders
- a $24 million arbitration award in a PNC Bank predatory lending class action
- a $10.25 million jury verdict in a detox facility negligence death case in Orange County, California
- and a $2.7 million employment defamation verdict in Johnson County, Kansas
Proven verdicts and settlements at Davis, Bethune & Jones, L.L.C.
These results are credited to Davis, Bethune & Jones, L.L.C.. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
Georgia Hayes, a Kansas City area ovarian cancer patient, sued pharmacist Robert Courtney after learning he had diluted the chemotherapy drugs used in her treatment. A Jackson County jury found Courtney liable and awarded Hayes $225,571,439 in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages, the first of hundreds of similar suits against Courtney to reach trial. The trial judge later found the award excessive and cut it by remittitur to $330,071,439, and that reduced judgment stood. Hayes herself and the case reporter covering the verdict both said she was unlikely to ever collect a significant portion of it.
A St. Louis jury awarded $28 million in compensatory damages and $149 million in punitive damages to Shannon Dugan, a New Jersey sheriff's deputy who was sexually assaulted by a Hyatt security guard who used his master key to enter her hotel room while she slept. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the full award in December 2024.
A 15-year-old boy went into Arkansas Children's Hospital for surgery to remove the brain tissue causing his seizures. The surgeon opened the wrong side of his head and removed healthy tissue before turning to the correct side. His parents were not told, and learned of it more than a year later during an unrelated examination.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
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Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.