$104 Million Verdict Against Illinois Tollway for I-90 Construction Zone Crash That Left a Man Paralyzed
After trial: The Tollway said it was reviewing the verdict; no post-trial ruling or appeal had been publicly reported as of late 2025.
Won by Cavanagh Sorich Law Group LLC.
A Cook County jury found the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority negligent for a 2016 construction zone crash on I-90 that killed one limousine passenger and left Rob Rosá paralyzed from the neck down, awarding Rosá and his spouse just over $104 million on October 9, 2025.
What happened
On March 25, 2016, a limousine carrying Rob Rosá, his spouse Michael Johnson, and four friends left Madison, Wisconsin for O'Hare International Airport, where the group planned to catch a flight to Mexico for a vacation. On Interstate 90, the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway, the limousine entered a construction zone near the Fox River Bridge. The driver missed a sharp lane shift, and the vehicle struck a concrete construction barrier and flipped. One passenger was killed. Rosá suffered a severe spinal cord injury and was left paralyzed from the neck down.
Rosá and Johnson sued the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority in the Circuit Court of Cook County, alleging the agency itself had created the danger. Their case rested on two failures. Safety rules required six warning signs in advance of the lane shift, and the Tollway had installed only one. The agency had also approved a temporary barrier design that deviated from national highway safety standards.
Timothy J. Cavanagh and Michael J. Sorich of Cavanagh Sorich Law Group tried the case over four weeks in the fall of 2025. Jurors heard evidence that five of the six required signs were missing and that the barrier departed from safer standard designs without explanation. Cavanagh argued the crash would not have happened with adequate signage, and that a barrier built to the required standard would have made any crash far less serious.
On October 9, 2025, after roughly six hours of deliberation, the jury found the Tollway negligent and awarded just over $104 million, the full amount the plaintiffs had requested. Rosá received $80.5 million, most of it for pain, suffering, and loss of a normal life. Johnson received $24.1 million, largely for past and future loss of companionship. The firm described the total as the largest verdict or settlement in Illinois history for a road construction case, and Cavanagh said it may be the first Illinois verdict in which a same-sex couple joined in a civil union received loss-of-consortium damages.
Rosá told reporters afterward that he still lives in pain 24 hours a day, and that no amount of money would take that away.
A Tollway spokesperson said the agency was reviewing the verdict and declined further comment. As of this writing, no ruling on post-trial motions and no appeal has been publicly reported. The case is Johnson et al. v. Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, No. 24-L-013349, in the Circuit Court of Cook County.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Cavanagh Sorich Law Group LLC
All Cavanagh Sorich Law Group LLC proven verdicts →A freight train broadsided a car carrying an Illinois couple and their adult daughter at a malfunctioning railroad crossing in Bloomingdale in January 2001, after a Canadian National/Illinois Central dispatcher mistakenly lifted the safety stop-and-flag order protecting the crossing. Fidel and Francisca Velarde each suffered permanent traumatic brain injuries that left them needing round-the-clock supervision. A Cook County jury found the two railroads and the driver at fault and awarded the Velardes a combined $21 million as part of a $55 million verdict that also covered their daughter's injuries and her husband's loss-of-consortium claim. The Illinois Appellate Court, First District, affirmed the verdict in full in 2004, rejecting the railroads' bid for a new trial or reduced damages.
Early on April 10, 2009, off-duty Chicago police detective Joseph Frugoli, driving with a blood alcohol level about three times the legal limit, slammed his SUV into a car stopped on the shoulder of the Dan Ryan Expressway with a flat tire. The car caught fire and both occupants, 23-year-old Andrew Cazares and 21-year-old Fausto Manzera, were killed. The families sued Frugoli and the City of Chicago, arguing a departmental 'code of silence' had let Frugoli drink and drive for years without discipline. The city settled in December 2017 during closing arguments, and the Chicago City Council approved the payout on February 28, 2018: $20 million total, split evenly between the two families. Timothy Cavanagh and Michael Sorich were attorneys of record for the Cazares side, which took $10 million; Kevin Conway of Cooney & Conway represented the Manzera family.
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