About Michael Manners
Mike Manners has tried cases across a wide variety of practice areas and industries over his career as a trial attorney. He has been named to the Best Lawyers in America directory, including recognition for product liability litigation and personal injury litigation for plaintiffs. In November 2000, Mike was appointed by Missouri Governor Roger Wilson to serve as a Circuit Court Judge with the 16th Judicial Circuit in Independence, where he received the Theodore McMillian Judicial Excellence Award from the Missouri Bar and was named 'Best Circuit Judge in the State' by Missouri Lawyers Weekly. The Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association honored him with its Joseph E. Stevens, Jr. Aspire to Excellence Award for his judicial service.
Before his judicial appointment, Mike spent 24 years as a trial attorney. In 1989 he was granted a Certificate of Civil Trial Advocacy from the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and in 1995 was accepted for membership in the American Board of Trial Advocacy. He has served as president of both the Eastern Jackson County Bar Association and the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys.
Proven verdicts and settlements at Langdon & Emison
These results are credited to Langdon & Emison. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
A Chittenden County jury returned $43,101,162 against Johnson Controls, the seat manufacturer, after a Vermont woman was left with a catastrophic spinal-cord injury when the single-sided recliner mechanism in her car seat collapsed during a rear-end collision she should have survived. The trial court entered final judgment at $36,948,123, and the appeal was later dismissed by stipulation.
A Jackson County jury held Ford Motor Company liable for a defective fuel tank design after three members of a Missouri family burned to death when their F-150 pickup ruptured and ignited during a 1999 highway collision.
A 1993 federal jury awarded $11.3 million to the sons of Beverly Garner, a passenger killed when a defective fuel pump ignited an engine fire in her 1985 Chevrolet S-10 Blazer, a verdict whose admissibility fight over a former GM insider's testimony traveled all the way to a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the plaintiffs' favor.
A Cook County jury awarded locomotive engineer Christopher Cravatta $5.3 million under FELA after he slipped on oil-coated flooring and an icy step-down gap at Chicago's Union Station, suffered a disc tear requiring spinal fusion, and was permanently disqualified from railroad work.
A federal jury awarded $4.5 million to U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Aaron Eckerberg after a commercial van driver for Inter-State Studio and Publishing Co. blew a stop sign on a Missouri highway and slammed into his truck, causing a fractured thoracic vertebra and traumatic brain injury that ended his career as a combat helicopter pilot.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
