About Sam Wooden
Sam Wooden is a trial attorney based in Dubuque, where he lives with his wife Sarah and their two sons. He graduated from Buena Vista University in 2007 and earned his J.D. from the University of Kentucky College of Law in 2010. He started his career with clean water litigation, then developed a plaintiff's personal injury practice across Iowa. He joined RSH Legal in 2023.
He is a 2017 graduate of the Trial Lawyers College and a member of the Iowa Association for Justice Board of Governors. He consistently visits clients in their homes before trial, believing it is important to know clients as people rather than as case files. He is admitted in Iowa, Illinois, and Tennessee (Tennessee inactive).
Proven verdicts and settlements at RSH Legal
These results are credited to RSH Legal. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
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.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
