Denver Jury Awards $145.26 Million to Brain-Injured Painter Over Workers' Comp Carrier's Denial of Rehab Care

A Denver District Court jury returned a verdict of $145.26 million on April 9, 2025, against NorGUARD Insurance Co., a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, finding that the workers' compensation carrier knowingly and unreasonably delayed and denied care for a young painter with a traumatic brain injury. Of the total, $85.26 million was compensatory damages and $60 million was punitive.

Fermin Salguero-Quijada was 20 in September 2021 when he fell from a ladder, more than 15 feet, while painting apartment buildings in Utah for a Colorado employer. He was taken to University of Utah Hospital with serious brain hemorrhages and was placed on life support, with no motor or verbal response. He survived, but he now needs round-the-clock help to communicate, eat, dress, walk and bathe.

NorGUARD was the employer's workers' compensation carrier. According to the reporting on the case, it denied the claim a little over a month after the fall, saying it needed to investigate, and later argued that a contractor's insurer should be responsible instead. The family said the carrier kept resisting even after a judge ordered it to pay, and that it refused to approve inpatient rehabilitation at Craig Rehabilitation Hospital, the specialized care his doctors had recommended. The family's position at trial was that the delay allowed his neurological injuries to become permanent.

The family sued in November 2023. Colorado is unusual in allowing an injured worker to bring a bad faith claim against a workers' compensation insurer, and that claim, not the original fall, was what the jury decided. The case was tried before Judge Sarah Wallace from March 31 to April 9, 2025. Sean Claggett of Claggett & Sykes Trial Lawyers represented Salguero-Quijada and told reporters the case was about the insurer's calculated decision to deny coverage for an injured worker.

NorGUARD's lawyer, Jonathan Morrow, said the carrier would continue to pay Salguero-Quijada's wages and benefits for the rest of his life. The defense also argued that the company made reasonable coverage determinations based on recommendations from the worker's own compensation physician. The jury rejected that position.

NorGUARD appealed to the Colorado Court of Appeals (docket 2025CA1304). In November 2025 the U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed a friend-of-the-court brief in that appeal, urging the court to require precise jury instructions on physical-impairment damages and to review such awards closely.