Corboy & Demetrio

A federal judge in Chicago entered a default judgment against the Islamic Republic of Iran for a 2009 roadside bomb attack in Iraq that killed Army Sergeant Joshua Soto and injured his platoon leader, First Lieutenant Miles Murray. Iran never appeared, and the court heard the plaintiffs' proof at a four-day evidentiary hearing. Murray was awarded $28 million, Soto's widow $32 million, and the couple's minor son $20 million, each including punitive damages.

Thomas Demetrio of Corboy & Demetrio represented seven of the people killed and injured when a suspended work platform fell from the John Hancock Center in 2002, part of a $75 million global settlement reached on the eve of trial.

A Cook County jury found Advocate Condell Medical Center responsible for the death of a 47-year-old quadriplegic father who suffered fatal baclofen withdrawal while waiting for a delayed surgery to replace his medication pump, and the verdict was later affirmed on appeal.

A Cook County jury awarded commuter Renea Poppel $29.6 million after a Metra Rock Island train took a 10 mph crossover at 69 mph and derailed, the largest Illinois verdict for one person injured in a mass-transit crash.

In May 1990 a Cook County jury awarded $22,358,814 to a 23-year-old flight attendant who was left an incomplete quadriplegic when a semitrailer struck her stopped car from behind in Highland Park, Illinois, in November 1987. The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed in January 1997 but cut the future medical care award by $1 million, so $21,358,814 stood.

After one of the deadliest building failures in Chicago history, Corboy & Demetrio's Francis Patrick Murphy led 14 of the victims and their families to a $16.6 million global settlement against the property owner and the porch builder.

A Cook County jury found the University of Chicago Hospitals negligent for lacking a second operating room and attaching a fetal monitor late, delaying a 1988 cesarean delivery. The boy born that day has permanent brain damage and needs 24-hour supervision. The jury awarded $10,912,500 on the prenatal count, and the First District upheld it.

A Cook County jury awarded a Chicago physician $10 million, with $1 million more to her husband, after a severe fourth-degree tear from her 2010 delivery at Rush University Medical Center went undiagnosed.

A Cook County jury awarded $8,235,000 against the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company for a brain injury suffered by a 15-year-old boy whose bicycle wheel came off as he rode over the railroad's Central Avenue crossing in Highland Park in 1976. The jury found for the bicycle manufacturer, Schwinn. The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed in 1987 and the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed on June 19, 1989.

A Chicago motorcyclist lost his left leg below the knee in 1988 when a driver ran a red light at Archer and Halsted just after a CTA bus driver waved him into the intersection. A Cook County jury awarded $4,492,710 and put 60 percent of the fault on the CTA and 40 percent on the driver. The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed the damages in full in 1996 and ordered a new trial only on the split of fault.