Personal Injury Attorneys in Idaho

In 1999, a federal jury in Boise found that Dr. Ian Ross Donald had punctured a fetal blood vessel during an amniocentesis on Sandy Kirkland, causing internal bleeding that went undetected for about sixteen hours and left her son with severe brain damage and spastic quadriplegia. The jury awarded $29,715,077, finding Donald 75 percent at fault and reckless and Wood River Medical Center 25 percent at fault and merely negligent, while clearing Sandy's other treating physician entirely. Because Idaho's noneconomic damages cap does not apply to a defendant a jury finds reckless, only the hospital's share of noneconomic damages was reduced, leaving roughly $26,538,077 of the award standing. The Idaho Supreme Court later upheld the cap's constitutionality on a certified question from the case. Paul Luvera, of the firm now known as Luvera Law Firm, represented the Kirkland family at trial.

Delbert Hayward, 86, a mechanic, died in February 1995 after nearly a year at Valley Vista Care Center in St. Maries, Idaho, where his family said he was repeatedly given the antipsychotic drug Haldol to control him. After a three-week trial in May 2006, a Benewah County jury returned an $18 million punitive verdict. By November 2006 the case had resolved in a $3.5 million settlement, most of it paid by the home's insurers.

An Ada County jury awarded $13.5 million to Carl Stiefel after an emergency physician misread his stroke symptoms as vertigo, delaying a correct diagnosis by nearly 14 hours and causing irreversible brain damage.

Shane Ackerschott hurt his back lifting freight in November 2014, then suffered a spinal cord injury and permanent paraplegia after an Idaho Falls urgent care clinic had him stand and walk for tests despite worsening neurological symptoms and never told him to restrict his movement. A Bonneville County jury awarded $7,958,113.67 in damages against Mountain View Hospital, LLC, doing business as RediCare. Idaho's cap on noneconomic damages cut the award by stipulation to $6,575,354.58. The Idaho Supreme Court affirmed the judgment in 2020, rejecting RediCare's comparative-fault defense and declining to reach the Ackerschotts' constitutional challenge to the cap on a timeliness ground.