John Hancock Center Scaffold Collapse: $75 Million Settlement for the Killed and Injured
Won by Corboy & Demetrio.
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.
What happened
On March 9, 2002, a suspended work platform that was being stored near the 42nd floor of the John Hancock Center in Chicago broke loose in high winds. Wind speeds that afternoon reached about 35 mph with gusts to 56 mph. The outrigger holding the platform overturned, and the rig swung down the building's west face, breaking windows and dropping steel and glass onto East Chestnut Street below.
Three women in cars on the street were killed where they sat. In two of those cars, young women in the front seats died while their mothers watched from the back seat. Eight other people on the sidewalks and in traffic were hurt, and one of the injured later died of his injuries in 2005.
Investigators traced the failure to the platform's outrigger. Forensic engineers at Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates inspected the debris, tested replacement wheels, ran wind tunnel studies on a scale model, and analyzed the wind loads. They tied the collapse to failure of the undercarriage wheels and the cable tie down system on the rear leg of the outriggers under downward wind pressure on the platform. Wheels 3 and a half inches in diameter had been swapped for ones as small as 1 and a half inches, friction clamps meant for windy conditions were never set, and the platform had not been lowered to the ground or raised to the roof as the operating guidelines required. The same investigation found that the architect's repair design did not contribute to the failure.
The cases were set for trial before Cook County Circuit Court Judge William Maddux, presiding judge of the Law Division, at the Daley Center. Thomas Demetrio of Corboy & Demetrio represented seven of the victims, including the families of the two young women killed in the front seats of their cars.
On the eve of trial in 2006, the defendants agreed to a $75 million global settlement covering ten people killed and injured in the collapse, resolved jointly across the plaintiffs' firms. Because the case ended in a negotiated settlement rather than a jury verdict, the figure was not subject to remittitur or reduction on appeal.
About five months after the collapse, Chicago passed an ordinance regulating scaffolding on buildings taller than eighty feet.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Corboy & Demetrio
All Corboy & Demetrio proven verdicts →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.
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.
Related premises liability verdicts
Anapol Weiss shareholder Kristen Gibbons Feden helped secure $1.6 billion in default verdicts for 104 women sexually abused as children by former Long Island pediatrician Stuart Copperman, one of the largest cumulative civil awards against a single individual in U.S. history.
A Dallas jury awarded $1.1 billion against a trust fund heir who beat a 2-year-old into a permanent vegetative state in 2021, a verdict the firm calls the largest child-assault award in U.S. history.
A Clayton County jury awarded $1 billion to a woman who was raped at age 14 by an armed security guard her employer hired without verifying he was licensed to carry a weapon.
Joseph Bruno and Bruno & Bruno served as lead plaintiffs' counsel in a landmark class action brought by more than 8,000 Gentilly residents exposed to a butadiene tank-car fire in 1987, securing a jury verdict that included $2.5 billion in punitive damages against CSX Transportation alone, later reduced to $850 million on appeal and affirmed by Louisiana's Fourth Circuit.