Trial lawyer Lantz Welch, known for big verdicts and his Weatherby Lake castle, has died

Lantz Welch, once one of the best-known trial lawyers in the country and the owner of a Camelot-style house on Weatherby Lake, died Thursday. He was 83.

In the obituary prepared by his family and friends, Welch was referred to as “large and very much in charge.” He profiled himself at Lantzlot.com, which included an autobiography titled “Mr. Lucky” with a young Welch, cigar clenched in his teeth and bare-chested, grinning on its cover.

The obituary and website reflected the generous sense of self and outsized persona that marked the personal injury attorney’s life and career.

At the peak of his courtroom prowess, Welch built a national reputation by securing a handful of multimillion-dollar verdicts for his clients.

Welch won a $15 million verdict on behalf of a woman rendered a quadriplegic in the 1981 Hyatt Regency hotel skywalk collapse and a $30 million settlement on behalf of a woman who became a quadriplegic after a 1988 car accident.

He represented 31 residents of Sedalia, Mo., in a lawsuit against the Alcolac chemical company that ended with a four-month-plus trial and jury verdicts of about $49 million in the late 1980s.

Welch once served as president of the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association, whose members could impress lawyers anywhere in the country by dropping Welch’s name, said Deanne Furry, who was executive secretary for the group.

If Welch liked to talk about his success and his powers as an attorney, Furry said, few of his colleagues could disagree.

“He was well known, and deservedly so. There was only one Lantz. He was very flamboyant — kind of like (Donald) Trump,” Furry said.

Friends said Welch didn’t necessarily share Trump’s politics but agreed he was an outsize personality.

Kansas City attorney Paul Kavanaugh remembers working for Welch as a 22-year-old law clerk. One day, Welch pressed a wad of cash into Kavanaugh’s hand to pay for his honeymoon. The two remained colleagues for years and then friends for life.

Welch lived his life all-out after surviving an airplane crash off the Florida coast in 1967 and being rescued in a life raft, Kavanaugh said.

“He was crazy — in a good way,” Kavanaugh said. “Everything with Lantz was big.”

Ursula Terrasi, owner of Terrasi Living & Scandia Home on the Country Club Plaza, described Welch as “an original.”

“You knew where you stood with him,” she said. “If you were his friend, he would do just anything for you,” she said.

He phased out his law career amid a dispute with his law partners over $12 million in fees. The Missouri Court of Appeals ruled in June 2003 that Welch was not entitled to share in the fees, which resulted from a $75 million verdict in a 1999 lawsuit in a railroad crossing accident.

Welch drew attention with his Weatherby Lake home, an 18,000-square-foot castle-like mansion completed in 1993. It sported 38 rooms and five bedrooms and spanned three lots. He put it on the market in in the summer of 2007 for $7.995 million. Terrasi said he never sold the home.

In 1985, he established the Lantz Welch Charitable Foundation, giving mostly to youth-oriented projects. Records show that it ended its fiscal year 2014 with more than $2.2 million in assets.

This story was originally published July 23, 2016 at 8:30 PM with the headline "Trial lawyer Lantz Welch, known for big verdicts and his Weatherby Lake castle, has died."