$32 Million Verdict Against ExxonMobil for Truck Driver Who Developed CRPS After Slip on Spilled Oil
Won by Horwitz, Horwitz & Associates.
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.
What happened
Stephanie Johnson was working as a truck driver when she visited an ExxonMobil facility and stepped into a pool of oil left on the floor. She fell, landing on her left hand. The injury did not heal in the ordinary sense. Over the months that followed, Johnson developed Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, a chronic pain condition with no known cure. Doctors describe CRPS as a disorder in which the nervous system continues generating severe pain long after the original wound has closed.
ExxonMobil contested virtually every element of the case at trial. The company argued the oil spill was minimal and could not have caused a fall, disputed whether the incident occurred as Johnson described, and put forward an alternative theory: that her ongoing pain stemmed from somatoform disorder tied to prior trauma rather than any physical injury caused by the fall. The jury was not persuaded.
The trial ran from September 10 to September 22, 2025, in the Cook County Circuit Court. Clifford Horwitz led the courtroom team for Johnson, joined by David Starshak and Gabriel Drury of Horwitz, Horwitz and Associates. The firm had received a settlement offer of $100,000 from ExxonMobil the day before trial began.
On September 22, the jury returned a verdict of $32 million, covering past and future damages. The award included no punitive component. ExxonMobil called the verdict 'irrational' and 'completely untethered to the evidence presented at trial,' pledging to pursue all available appellate relief. No reduction had been ordered as of the date of publication.
Legal observers noted the result as the largest verdict in Illinois history arising from a CRPS diagnosis in a slip-and-fall case.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.LegalNewsLine / Cook County Record: Jury orders ExxonMobil to pay woman $32M for slip-and-fall (Sept. 2025)·Archived copy
- 2.WGN-TV Chicago: Truck driver awarded $32 million in slip-and-fall case against ExxonMobil (Sept. 2025)
- 3.Trial Guides: $32 Million Verdict against ExxonMobil (Oct. 2025)·Archived copy
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 $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.
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.
Related slip & fall verdicts
After a neurosurgeon slipped on a wet hospital pantry floor and developed reflex sympathetic dystrophy that ended his surgical career, an Evansville jury found St. Mary's Medical Center fully at fault and awarded $16.95 million, a verdict the Indiana Court of Appeals later affirmed.
A Kern County jury awarded William Kidd and his wife Elaine $16.2 million after he slipped at a Bakersfield El Pollo Loco and suffered a brain injury that later required surgery.
A Clark County jury held Lowe's responsible after Kelly Hendrickson slipped on liquid draining from store planters, fractured her skull, and permanently lost her senses of taste and smell.
A King County jury awarded Lesley Mettler Auld $13.1 million after she slipped on an algae-covered Seattle sidewalk in July 2021 and ruptured both quadriceps tendons. Jurors found both the City of Seattle and 14th & Dravus LLC, the owner of the adjacent apartment building, negligent, and split the fault 52 percent to the property owner and 48 percent to the city over an overgrown hedge that shaded the walkway and the moss and algae that grew under it. Auld, a longtime personal trainer and 14-time Ironman finisher, had three surgeries to repair the tendons, and her examining physicians said she would need at least three more operations on her right knee and could lose the right leg above the knee if those failed. The Washington Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in March 2026, and 14th & Dravus has since asked the state Supreme Court to take up the case.