About Robert Jacobs
Robert Jacobs co-founded Jacobs & Crumplar in 1981. He graduated from City College of the City University of New York in 1963 with a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering and received his law degree from Temple University in 1968. He then practiced with the Wilmington firm of Bader, Dorsey & Kreshtool before forming Jacobs & Crumplar.
Bob applies his background in chemical engineering to patent litigation cases, and his experience in both disciplines has made him an effective attorney in State and Federal Courts. He is a past president of the Delaware Trial Lawyers Association and has served on the Board of Governors of the American Association for Justice (formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America). He has served as Committee Chairman in many areas, including the Section on Toxic Environmental and Pharmaceutical Torts.
Proven verdicts and settlements at Jacobs & Crumplar
These results are credited to Jacobs & Crumplar. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
Thomas Crumplar and co-counsel secured a $77.425 million trust for 146 survivors of clergy sexual abuse as part of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington's Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in 2011.
A Kent County jury awarded John Vai $63 million against defrocked priest Francis DeLuca and St. Elizabeth's Parish in Wilmington after finding both liable for childhood sexual abuse that began in the 1960s, producing what victim advocates called the largest compensatory verdict in U.S. clergy abuse history and the first time an individual parish was held accountable.
A Delaware jury returned a unanimous $9 million verdict on July 23, 2025, in the first case ever tried over asbestos-contaminated shotgun shells, holding DuPont and Remington's successor liable for the mesothelioma death of Eugene Schoepke, an 84-year-old Illinois farmer and lifelong hunter.
Delaware agreed in December 2017 to pay $7.55 million to settle a federal suit over the February 2017 uprising at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna, where Lt. Steven Floyd was killed and other officers were held hostage. The plaintiffs said years of understaffing and forced overtime left the prison exposed. The money was divided among 11 claimants and the split was not made public, so the figure is an aggregate. The state denied wrongdoing.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
