Stephen Higdon

On January 14, 2017, Luis Rangel Jr. was driving to work at high speed in heavy rain on State Highway 158 outside Midland, Texas, when his pickup crossed into oncoming traffic and killed Coast Guard petty officer Kantrell Hires and three of his children, ages 16, 14 and 12. The boys' mother, Neva Rogers, sued Rangel and his employer, DanCar Energy Construction, arguing that a company policy requiring workers to report and sign in on bad-weather days put Rangel on the road that morning. A Midland County jury agreed in May 2021, deliberating six hours before awarding Rogers $5.9 million, reported to be the largest personal injury verdict in the county's history. DanCar's lawyer publicly disputed the award, said the company had already gone out of business and said the money would never be paid, and what Rogers ultimately collected is not public. Michael Lyons, Christopher Simmons, Christopher Carr and Stephen Higdon of Lyons & Simmons represented Rogers at trial.

A Dallas County jury found Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Flower Mound willfully and wantonly negligent for delaying treatment of a spinal epidural hemorrhage that left Judy 'Jessie' Adams a paraplegic, returning a verdict of $10,125,000 for Adams and her husband Richard on December 9, 2022. Jurors split fault 69 percent to the hospital, 30 percent to the physician who gave the steroid injection that triggered the bleeding, and 1 percent to his practice. Texas's cap on non-economic damages in health care liability claims cut the couple's non-economic recovery to $500,000, leaving a collectible total of roughly $5 million. The hospital appealed, and its own filing in the court of appeals says the parties reached a full and final settlement on May 31, 2023 and funded it before the appeal was dismissed on July 11, 2023, so the amount Adams ultimately received is not public. Michael Lyons, Christopher Carr, Michael Fechner and Stephen Higdon of Lyons & Simmons represented the Adamses at trial.