About Thomas Crumplar
Thomas Crumplar graduated from the University of Michigan with Honors, Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1971. As a law student at the University of Virginia, he authored numerous law review articles and spoke at national attorney conferences, graduating in 1975. While at Virginia, he developed the university's patent policy for scientist-led projects. After graduation he clerked for Federal Judge John T. Copenhaver in Charleston, West Virginia. He worked briefly for a corporate defense firm in Louisville, Kentucky before deciding to devote his career to representing individuals.
He moved to Wilmington in 1978 and co-founded Jacobs & Crumplar with Robert Jacobs in 1981. He is a member of the Delaware and New Jersey bars, the American Association for Justice, and the National Crime Victim's Bar Association. In 1988 he obtained a $75 million asbestos verdict, at the time the second highest personal injury verdict in United States history. In 2010, he secured the largest award against an individual church in United States history, over $30 million, in a sex abuse case, which ranked among the ten highest verdicts in the country that year.
Proven verdicts and settlements
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.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
