RSH Legal

Cedar Rapids' insurer paid $8 million to Jerime Mitchell, a quadriplegic man shot by Officer Lucas Jones during a 2016 traffic stop, in what attorneys described as the largest police-misconduct settlement in Iowa history.

A Waterloo man lost all feeling below the waist after a cervical radiofrequency ablation at the C5-6 level in December 2014. A Black Hawk County jury found Dr. Ashar Afzal and Cedar Valley Medical Specialists negligent and awarded $7.36 million to him and his wife. The Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed in 2021.

Ross Hall died after what his family alleged was negligent cardiology care. The jury awarded $5,500,000, and the allocation is the striking part: only $250,000 for his own pain and suffering before death, and the remaining $5.25 million to his widow and three children for what they lost.

A Black Hawk County jury awarded $1.8 million to Massachusetts sound engineer Frank Sgambellone after a State of Iowa forklift operator ran over his ankle during post-concert teardown at the UNI-Dome in February 2016.

A Cerro Gordo County jury found Good Shepherd, a Mason City nursing home, negligent and willful and wanton in its care of an 84-year-old dementia resident who lost 43 pounds and died of dehydration in April 2015. It awarded her four children $150,000 in compensatory and $750,000 in punitive damages. The Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed in 2018.

Seven adult children of an 84-year-old resident of Mill Valley Care Center in Jackson County, Iowa, sued after she fell from the toilet in January 2016 and died five days later of head injuries. A jury found the home negligent in December 2019 and awarded $800,000 in compensatory damages plus $1.37 million in punitive damages. The trial court set aside the punitive award, and the Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed in 2021, so the $800,000 compensatory award stood.