Loren Macke, Pamela Eden v. Austin Patton

Summary

The Supreme Court of Missouri affirmed the circuit court's approval and distribution of a wrongful-death settlement, rejecting both the challenge to a second continuance denial and the challenge to the allocation of proceeds. The court held that the continuance ruling was within the circuit court's discretion and that the 98-percent/2-percent apportionment neither misapplied the governing law nor lacked evidentiary support. The court also clarified that wrongful-death apportionment is reviewed under the ordinary court-tried-case standard rather than an abuse-of-discretion or heightened gross-excessiveness standard.