Michael D. Murphy is a 1991 Order of the Coif graduate of the University of Missouri School of Law. While in law school, Mike was the editor-in-chief of the Missouri Law Review, and received the Judge Shepard Barclay Prize, awarded annually to the “senior who has attained the highest standing in scholarship and moral leadership.” He was also awarded both the Ike Skelton, Sr. Prize for Excellence in Trial Practice and the American Jurisprudence Award for Trial Practice.
Mike has published a number of articles on trial practice-related subjects and, in fact, in 1996 and in 2009 he was awarded the W. Oliver Rasch Award for the outstanding article written for the Journal of the Missouri Bar. In addition, Mike has authored portions of West’s Missouri Practice Series relating to pleading rules for defendants.
Mike is a member of the American Bar Association’s Litigation Section, where he is a member of both the Expert Witnesses Committee and the Products Liability Committee. He also serves on the board of directors of the Missouri Organization of Defense Lawyers.
Licensed in Missouri, Texas and Colorado, Mike’s practice focuses on the defense of product liability (including both agricultural and industrial type products), toxic tort, and medical negligence actions, as well as general personal injury and commercial litigation. Within the past several years, Mike has defended cases in state and federal courts located in Missouri, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Illinois, Wisconsin, Kentucky and California. Additionally, Mike has significant experience in overseeing and coordinating the nationwide defense of product liability claims. In the past, he has overseen the national defense of silicosis litigation. That litigation included more than 150 active cases in numerous jurisdictions with several thousand individual plaintiffs.
Representative corporate clients for whom Mike has performed legal work include: Textron Inc., Norton Company, North Safety Products, Inc., U.S. Silica Company, Frito-Lay, Inc., Pizza Hut, USAA, Mine Safety Appliances Company, Austin Powder Company, Texas Instruments, Givaudan Flavors, Chief Industries, Belgrade State Bank, United Conveyor Corporation, and PepsiCo.
Mike has received an AV peer review rating by the Martindale-Hubbell law directory. He has been elected a Fellow in the American Bar Foundation, an organization whose membership is limited to one-third of one percent of the lawyers in each jurisdiction. And, he has been named a "Missouri-Kansas Super Lawyer" in 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2010, an honor that is reserved to no more than 5% of the lawyers in the bi-state region. Most recently, Mike was invited to become a fellow in the Litigation Counsel of America, a trial lawyer honorary society composed of less than one-half of one percent of American lawyers.
Prior to returning to Southeast Missouri and joining Osburn, Hine, Yates and Murphy, Mike was a partner in the Dallas office of Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue, the 2002 American Lawyer Litigation Department of the Year.