$6.8 Million Verdict for Family of Teen Killed by Falling Concrete Panel at Milwaukee's O'Donnell Park Garage
After trial: The Wisconsin Court of Appeals affirmed the judgments against Advance Cast Stone in 2017 (2017 WI App 51), including punitive damages, but held insurer Liberty owes only its policy limits. We could not confirm the amount finally collected.
Won by Cannon & Dunphy S.C. and Cramer, Multhauf & Hammes, LLP.
A 13.5-ton concrete panel fell from the O'Donnell Park parking structure in Milwaukee on June 24, 2010 and killed a 15-year-old boy. In November 2013 a Milwaukee County jury put 88 percent of the fault on Advance Cast Stone, found it had concealed a defect in the installation, and awarded the boy's estate and mother more than $6.8 million in compensatory damages. It also awarded $15 million in punitive damages against the company, shared with another injured family.
What happened
On the evening of June 24, 2010, a 15-year-old boy from Greenfield was walking with friends toward the Summerfest grounds on Milwaukee's lakefront when a 13.5-ton decorative concrete panel broke loose from the O'Donnell Park parking structure and fell on the group. The boy was crushed and died. A woman walking with him lost part of a leg, and her teenage son suffered a fractured leg and a head wound.
The panel had been made and installed by Advance Cast Stone of Random Lake. The structure was the county's, and J.H. Findorff & Son was the construction manager. At trial in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, the evidence was that the panel was held on with two steel connecting rods instead of the four called for, along with other departures from the proper installation method. Advance Cast Stone said it had permission to install it that way. The jury did not accept that.
The boy's estate and his mother were represented by Allan Foeckler, Brett Eckstein and Sarah Kaas of Cannon & Dunphy, S.C. of Brookfield. The injured family was represented separately by Timothy Andringa of Cramer, Multhauf & Hammes, so the two groups of plaintiffs tried their claims together but with different counsel. The jury answered about thirty questions on fault, negligence and misrepresentation.
In November 2013 it put 88 percent of the fault on Advance Cast Stone, 10 percent on Findorff and 2 percent on Milwaukee County. It found that Advance Cast Stone had intentionally concealed and misrepresented a defect in how it installed the panels. For the Kellner plaintiffs, the jury awarded more than $6.8 million in compensatory damages: $6.3 million of it to the estate for the pain and suffering the boy endured in the seconds before he was crushed, and the rest to his mother. It also awarded $15 million in punitive damages against Advance Cast Stone, shared between the Kellner and Wosinski plaintiffs. The injured family and Milwaukee County, which sued over repairs and lost revenue, received separate awards.
The trial judge upheld the verdicts after post-trial motions in early 2014. In July 2017 the Wisconsin Court of Appeals affirmed the judgments against Advance Cast Stone, including the punitive award, whose amount the company did not challenge. The court limited the insurer Liberty to its policy limits rather than the full judgment. Mr. Foeckler argued the Kellner plaintiffs' side of the appeal.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Wosinski v. Advance Cast Stone Co., 2017 WI App 51, 377 Wis. 2d 596 (Wis. Ct. App. July 11, 2017)
- 2.WISN, 'Jury finds Advance Cast Stone mainly responsible for O'Donnell Park garage panel failure', Nov. 2013·Archived copy
- 3.Insurance Journal, 'Jury Awards $39M in Fatal Wisconsin Garage Panel Fall', Nov. 27, 2013·Archived copy
- 4.FOX6 Milwaukee, 'Jury awards millions to families impacted by O'Donnell parking collapse', Nov. 21, 2013·Archived copy
- 5.Wisconsin Law Journal, 'Judge upholds O'Donnell verdict, cancels insurance trial', Feb. 10, 2014·Archived copy
More proven verdicts from Cannon & Dunphy S.C.
All Cannon & Dunphy S.C. proven verdicts →A Walworth County jury found Waukesha Memorial Hospital liable after a nurse pushed air into a two-week-old premature infant's IV line during a blood transfusion, sending emboli to his brain and leaving him with permanent quadriplegia and no usable speech.
A Milwaukee jury verdict and a related settlement delivered $25.24 million to a family after an unlicensed first-year resident spent 11 hours treating their teenage daughter for constipation while a twisted bowel killed the tissue it fed.
An Ozaukee County jury awarded the estate of Judith Cisewski $15 million after a retaining wall at her Port Washington senior living campus collapsed and buried her under concrete blocks for roughly two hours; she died the following day.
The family of a three-year-old girl who died of E. coli traced to contaminated beef at a South Milwaukee Sizzler reached a $13.5 million settlement, among the largest food-borne-illness recoveries in the country.
Related wrongful death verdicts
In December 2011, a Fayette County, Texas jury awarded the family of an 8-year-old Splendora boy $150.37 billion after he was doused with gasoline and set on fire by a 13-year-old neighbor in 1998, two weeks after the same neighbor sexually assaulted him. The boy survived third-degree burns over 99 percent of his body for nearly 13 years before dying in April 2011 of a skin cancer linked to his injuries. The defendant, Don Wilburn Collins, never appeared to answer the civil suit, and the jury awarded $370 million in actual damages plus roughly $150 billion in punitive damages, the largest civil verdict in U.S. history. Attorney Craig Sico, who represented the family, said from the outset that the judgment was not collectible and was intended to pressure prosecutors into reopening the long-dormant criminal case. Prosecutors did reopen the case, and Collins was later convicted of capital murder in a separate criminal proceeding.
A Pensacola jury awarded Cynthia Robinson $23.6 billion in punitive damages against R.J. Reynolds over the 1996 lung cancer death of her 36-year-old husband, the largest single-plaintiff award of Florida's Engle tobacco litigation, but the trial judge called the number constitutionally excessive, an appeals court ordered a full retrial over improper closing arguments, and a second jury returned a complete defense verdict in 2019, so the estate ultimately collected nothing.
Frantz Law Group, representing roughly 5,000 victims, helped negotiate a $13.5 billion PG&E bankruptcy settlement covering tens of thousands of survivors and families from the 2015 Butte, 2017 North Bay, and 2018 Camp wildfires.