$10 Million Cook County Verdict for Dentist Who Developed Bilateral CRPS After Walgreens Hand-Truck Strike
Won by Horwitz, Horwitz & Associates.
A Cook County jury awarded $10 million to a dentist who developed bilateral Complex Regional Pain Syndrome after a delivery worker's overloaded hand truck struck her leg at a Lincolnwood Walgreens in 2012, setting what the Illinois Jury Verdict Reporter confirmed as the largest CRPS injury verdict in state history at the time.
What happened
On March 26, 2012, a 50-year-old dentist stopped at a Walgreens pharmacy in Lincolnwood, Illinois, to pick up a prescription. While she was in the store, a delivery employee for Dean Transportation was moving a hand truck loaded with roughly 350 pounds of Dean's milk. The crates were stacked high enough to block the worker's line of sight, and he gave no warning to customers in the aisle. The hand truck struck the woman in the right calf.
The initial blow did not seem catastrophic. Over the weeks and months that followed, however, the pain in her right leg did not fade. Physicians diagnosed Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, a chronic neurological condition in which the nervous system generates unrelenting pain far beyond what any underlying tissue damage would ordinarily produce. The CRPS then spread to her left leg and both feet through a process known as mirror-image spreading. By the time the case reached trial, she was managing a 'chronic unstoppable burning sensation' in both lower extremities with high-dose morphine and a surgically implanted spinal cord stimulator.
Clifford Horwitz of Horwitz, Horwitz and Associates filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court against Dean Transportation. The complaint alleged two related failures: that the delivery worker pushed the hand truck through a customer area without warning anyone, and that the crates were stacked so high that the worker could not see where he was going. Dean Transportation eventually withdrew its affirmative defenses after trial began, conceding negligence, but contested causation and insisted the employee's actions had not caused the plaintiff's CRPS.
The eight-day trial turned on the question of whether CRPS was a foreseeable consequence of the collision and whether its bilateral spread was genuine. Horwitz and co-counsel Michael Carter presented the liability and medical evidence. The jury did not accept the defense causation argument.
On September 15, 2016, all twelve jurors returned a unanimous verdict of $10 million. The Illinois Jury Verdict Reporter confirmed it as the largest CRPS injury verdict in Illinois history to that point. No appellate reduction has been reported.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Horwitz, Horwitz & Associates
All Horwitz, Horwitz & Associates proven verdicts →A Cook County jury awarded $64 million to Ronald Bayer, a union ironworker paralyzed from the neck down after falling 15 feet at a Panduit Corp. warehouse construction site in DeKalb, Illinois, at the time the largest verdict ever returned for a quadriplegic in Illinois.
A Cook County jury awarded $32 million to truck driver Stephanie Johnson, who developed Complex Regional Pain Syndrome after slipping on oil at an ExxonMobil facility, in what the Jury Verdict Reporter recorded as the largest CRPS verdict in Illinois history.
Electrician Frank Russo was injured in July 2013 when a crane at Corey Steel's plant struck the man-lift he was working in, leaving him with hip, shoulder, back, elbow and finger injuries. Corey Steel admitted liability, and a Cook County jury awarded $9,987,000 in damages in 2017. A successor judge ordered a new trial over a future hip surgery opinion, and the Illinois Appellate Court reversed that order in December 2018, so the verdict stood.
A Cook County jury awarded $5,745,600 to Local 10 journeyman carpenter Gary Markovich after a superintendent's drill bit wrapped his ulnar nerve during work at Northwestern Prentice Women's Hospital, producing stage III CRPS that ended his career, at the time the largest non-amputation hand-injury verdict in Illinois history.
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