Charlet didn’t leave her apartment on February 15, 16 or 17, and Monday the 18th was President’s day, so she had the day off work. Around 2 p.m. on the 18th, Charlet and her sister walked to the building to the northeast of her building to do laundry. The sidewalks and parking lots were mostly clear, however, there was a significant amount of ice where the sidewalk met the parking lot (between two cars). The surface of the ice appeared as if it had partially melted and turned into slush, people walked through it when it was slushy, after which it refroze with large bumps or ridges. Charlet and her sister successfully made the first trek across the ice, but on the way back Charlet slipped and fell on her left side. She fractured the tip of her radius at her left wrist, and fractured and dislocated the tips of her radius and ulna at her left elbow. You can see bone fragments from the tips of her radius and ulna are floating in the tissue near her elbow in the imaging.

Because of the wrist fracture, Charlet’s doctors were unable to keep her elbow in place, making surgery necessary. Her surgeon installed a plate with two screws and seven pins in her wrist, installed two self-tapping rods in the radius below her elbow, and two self-tapping rods in the humerus above her elbow. These rods stuck out of the side of her arm around 5-6″, and were held in place with two external rods. The external rods held her elbow at a 90 degree angle for the next approximately three weeks, after which they were removed to allow her to work on bending and flexing her elbow. A couple weeks later the rods were removed.

Charlet’s sister and her husband testified about the pain and suffering that Charlet went through, and about how these injuries affected her life. Charlet told the jury this was by far the most painful thing she ever went through, that she still has daily fear and anxiety when using her left arm, that she can’t do normal things like going to a bank drive-thru, that she has trouble sleeping, and that she still experiences pain on a daily basis. Charlet incurred $84,432.10 in medical expenses billed, $21,139.18 in medical expenses paid, and $8,175.20 in lost income.

Trial began on July 15, 2024, but ended in a mistrial midway through the second day when a witness blurted out that “five people” slipped and fell around the same time as my client, which violated one of the Court’s pretrial rulings. The second trial commenced on Monday, October 28, 2024, and the jury returned a verdict for $300,000 assessing 90% fault to The Oaks a little before noon on Thursday, for a net award of $270,000 to Charlet Snider. The defense offered $50,000 prior to the first trial, which was increased to $100,000 on the first day of trial. The offer was withdrawn a few days after the mistrial. A week or so before the second trial, the defense offered $150,000, but Charlet chose to reject the offer and proceed to trial.

Click to read the report from the Greater Kansas City Jury Verdict Service.

On April 25, 2018, Bill Kenney Law Firm, LLC filed a class action lawsuit against Shark Bar, asserting that Shark Bar had been engaged in unlawful telemarketing practices for years. In December 2018, we teamed up with Edelson P.C.–a plaintiff’s firm with extensive experience in class action and TCPA litigation.

After the filing of plaintiff’s second amended class action complaint, naming Cordish Companies, Inc. (“Cordish”) and Entertainment Consulting International, LLC (“ECI”) as additional defendants, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing, among other things, that the TCPA is unconstitutional. The Court denied the motion, correctly holding that the unconstitutional portion of the statute–the Government-backed debt exception–should be severed. The Supreme Court of the United States recently did the same in Barr v. Am. Ass’n of Political Consultants, Inc., No. 19-631 (U.S. July 6, 2020). The Supreme Court also recently announced that it will decide what constitutes an ATDS under the TCPA in Facebook v. Duguid, No. 19-511 (U.S.)

On April 27, 2020, the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri issued a ruling on plaintiff’s motion for class certification, among other motions, in Hand v. Beach Entertainment KC, LLC d/b/a Shark Bar, et al., No. 4:18-cv-668-NKL (W.D. Mo.) While the Court disagreed with our position that Shark Bar used an ATDS, the Court determined that plaintiff’s and the class members’ NDNCR claims were suitable for resolution on a class-wide basis. The Court certified a class consisting of thousands of consumers who received more than one text message in any twelve-month period after their number had been registered on the NDNCR.

During the nearly four-year period asserted in the Complaint, Shark Bar sent over 475,000 text messages to more than 73,000 phone numbers. In his motion for class certification, plaintiff cross-referenced a subset of 11,562 numbers against the NDNCR, resulting in a list of 4,860 individual phone numbers that were registered on the NDNCR prior to receiving a text message–which was more than enough to satisfy the numerosity requirement. In analyzing plaintiff’s motion for class certification, the Court found that plaintiff had standing to assert a claim, that the class was ascertainable, that there were questions of law and fact common to plaintiff and the class, that plaintiff’s claims were typical of those of the class, that plaintiff and his attorneys would fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class, that common questions predominated over individual ones, and that a class action is superior to other methods of adjudication. Ultimately the Court appointed plaintiff J.T. Hand as class representative, and appointed Bill Kenney, Benjamin Richman, Michael Ovca, and Eve-Lynn Rapp as class counsel. Defendants filed a petition for permission to appeal the district court’s certification order to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, which was denied just 15 days later. Some of the primary filings are available below.

Orders on Motion to Dismiss, Summary Judgment, Daubert, Class Certification:

• Order Denying Motion to Dismiss
• Order on Cross-Motions for Summary Judgment, Daubert, Class Certification

Petition for Permission to Appeal to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals:

• Defendants’ Petition for Permission to Appeal
• Plaintiff’s Answer in Opposition to Defendants’ Petition for Permission to Appeal
• Judgment Denying Defendants’ Petition for Permission to Appeal

Plaintiff’s Motion for Class Certification:

• Plaintiff’s Suggestions in Support of Motion for Class Certification
• Defendants’ Suggestions in Opposition to Motion for Class Certification
• Plaintiff’s Reply Suggestions in Support of Motion for Class Certification

Plaintiff’s Motion for Partial Summary Judgment:

• Plaintiff’s Suggestions in Support of Motion for Partial Summary Judgment
• Defendants’ Suggestions in Opposition to Plaintiff’s Motion for Partial Summary Judgment
• Plaintiff’s Reply Suggestions in Support of Motion for Partial Summary Judgment

Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment:

• Defendants’ Suggestions in Support of Motion for Summary Judgment
• Plaintiff’s Suggestions in Opposition to Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment
• Defendants’ Reply Suggestions in Support of Motion for Summary Judgment

Defendant’s Motion to Exclude the Testimony of Plaintiff’s Expert:

• Defendants’ Suggestions in Support of Daubert Motion
• Plaintiff’s Suggestions in Opposition to Daubert Motion
• Defendants’ Reply Suggestions in Support of Daubert Motion

Complaint, Answer, and Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss:

• Second Amended Class Action Complaint
• Answer and Affirmative Defenses to Second Amended Complaint
• Defendants’ Suggestions in Support of Motion to Dismiss
• Plaintiff’s Suggestions in Opposition to Motion to Dismiss
• Defendants’ Reply Suggestions in Support of Motion to Dismiss
• United States’ Suggestions in Support of the Constitutionality of the TCPA
• Defendants’ Response in Opposition to United States’ Suggestions in Support of the Constitutionality of the TCPA

Under Missouri law, when “a person when requested to submit to any test allowed … requests to speak to an attorney, the person shall be granted twenty minutes in which to attempt to contact an attorney. If upon the completion of the twenty-minute period the person continues to refuse to submit to any test, it shall be deemed a refusal.” Section 577.041.1, Revised Statutes of Missouri (2013). On appeal, we argued that the legislature could not have intended for law enforcement to be able to listen to or record a driver’s attorney-client conversation, let alone be able to use them as evidence in a criminal prosecution. The only logical interpretation of the statute is to give drivers 20 minutes to speak with their attorney in private.

The panel was heavily divided, with five judges voting for my client and four judges voting for law enforcement and the department of revenue. Fortunately the majority agreed with us, and reversed the one-year revocation of my client’s drivers license.

The case is Roesing v. Director of Revenue, 573 S.W.3d 634 (Mo. banc 2019). It was covered extensively in the below series of articles written by Jessica Shumaker of Missouri Lawyers Weekly.

• Man appeals license revocation on privacy grounds
• Court finds no right to privacy when calling attorney about DWI testing
• Court weighs right to private attorney calls
• Supreme Court reverses man’s license revocation

The case is Simpson v. Magnum Piering, Inc., No. 4:17-cv-731-NKL (W.D. Mo.) Some of the primary filings are available below.

• Plaintiff’s Petition for Damages
• Defendant’s Amended Answer
• Order on Plaintiff’s Request for Discovery Sanctions
• Plaintiff’s Suggestions in Support of Motion for Partial Summary Judgment
• Defendant’s Suggestions in Support of Motion for Summary Judgment