Mother of Kansas City Shooting Victim Recovers $27 Million From Commercial Property Owner
Won by Ketchmark & McCreight, P.C..
A woman sued a commercial property owner for wrongful death after her child was shot and killed on the property in Kansas City, alleging the landowner had failed to provide adequate security measures and precautions. The case was handled under a confidentiality agreement that keeps the parties' identities and the property's location out of the public record. It was resolved in Jackson County Circuit Court on May 31, 2024, under the caption Confidential v. Confidential, for $27,000,000. Missouri Lawyers Media, which reported the settlement and reached plaintiff's counsel for comment, later listed it as the top settlement in its Top Verdicts and Settlements roundup for 2024.
What happened
A commercial property owner resolved a wrongful death lawsuit for $27,000,000 after a person was shot and killed on the company's property in Kansas City. The case was handled under a confidentiality agreement that shields the identities of the decedent, the plaintiff and the defendant. It is recorded in Jackson County Circuit Court in Missouri under the caption Confidential v. Confidential, with a settlement date of May 31, 2024.
The plaintiff, the decedent's mother, alleged that the landowner had failed to provide adequate security measures and precautions at the property where her child was killed. Michael Ketchmark and Ben Fadler of Ketchmark & McCreight represented her. The specific security measures the property lacked, and the exact date and address of the shooting, were not disclosed because of the confidentiality agreement.
The person who was killed left two young children, a detail Fadler provided to Missouri Lawyers Media when the trade paper reached him for comment. Beyond that, the agreement kept the decedent's identity, age and occupation out of the public record, along with the name of the business that owned the property where the shooting happened.
The landowner settled rather than try the case. 'Gun violence continues to plague our larger cities. The landowner in this case did not want to face us in front of a jury,' Fadler told Missouri Lawyers Media. The recovery is reported as a single $27,000,000 figure. No public breakdown into categories of damages, such as loss of support for the two children, has been released, and because the terms are confidential there is no public record of when or by whom the money was paid.
Fadler framed the result as a warning to other property owners. 'The 27-million-dollar settlement is a loud warning to absentee landowners,' he said. 'If you don't improve security and protect people, we will come after you and you will pay for your neglect.' Missouri Lawyers Media listed the case as the top settlement in its Top Verdicts and Settlements roundup for 2024. Larger plaintiff verdicts and judgments were reported in the state that year, so the listing marks this as the biggest reported settlement of 2024 rather than the biggest Missouri result of any kind.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Missouri Lawyers Media, July 9, 2024, bylined article by staff reporter Kallie Cox: establishes the $27,000,000 settlement, the Confidential v. Confidential caption, the May 31, 2024 settlement date, the Jackson County Circuit Court venue, the commercial-property shooting and inadequate-security allegation, Michael Ketchmark and Ben Fadler of Ketchmark & McCreight PC as plaintiff's attorneys, and Fadler's on-record quotes
- 2.Missouri Lawyers Media, Feb. 12, 2025, 'Missouri's top 2024 legal victories send strong message': corroborates the $27 million confidential wrongful death settlement over a Kansas City commercial-property shooting and repeats Fadler's quotes
- 3.Missouri Lawyers Media Top Verdicts and Settlements 2024 winners list, Jan. 23, 2025: submission-based ranking list, corroboration only, showing the case as the No. 1 settlement of 2024 and crediting Michael Ketchmark and Ben Fadler of Ketchmark & McCreight
More proven verdicts from Ketchmark & McCreight, P.C.
All Ketchmark & McCreight, P.C. proven verdicts →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 Clay County, Missouri jury awarded $76 million to the family of David Ford, a 48-year-old delivery driver crushed by moving machinery while dropping off vehicle seats at Ford Motor Company's Kansas City Assembly Plant. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict in full in 2019.
A Monroe County jury awarded $58.6 million, including $56.6 million in punitive damages, to James Graham, a Hannibal food plant worker who developed the irreversible lung disease bronchiolitis obliterans after years of exposure to Givaudan butter flavoring chemicals. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in full in April 2026.
Related premises liability verdicts
Appointed by the court as Plaintiffs Liaison Counsel and Co-Lead Class Counsel, Stephen Herman of Herman Herman and Katz helped negotiate a $7.8 billion economic and property-damage class settlement with BP covering more than 100,000 Gulf Coast businesses and individuals harmed by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Anapol Weiss shareholder Kristen Gibbons Feden helped secure $1.6 billion in default verdicts for 104 women sexually abused as children by former Long Island pediatrician Stuart Copperman, one of the largest cumulative civil awards against a single individual in U.S. history.
Saltz Mongeluzzi and Bendesky joined the plaintiffs' leadership team that secured a $1.2 billion settlement for the families and survivors of 98 people killed when Champlain Towers South collapsed in Surfside, Florida on June 24, 2021 -- the largest construction-disaster settlement in U.S. history.