Jury Awards $11.25 Million to Son of Mother Killed When Company Employee Swerved Into Her Lane
After trial: The company's lawyer told the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin that it accepted the award and did not expect to file post-trial motions. We found no appeal.
Won by Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard P.C..
A Winnebago County jury awarded $11.25 million to the estate of Chamicwa Black, a 33-year-old mother killed in a February 2015 crash in Rockford when an Anderson Automotive employee swerved into her lane. The company admitted negligence about a year into the case, so the six-day trial decided damages only. The jury awarded $8 million for her young son's loss of society, $3 million for his grief and mental suffering, and $250,000 for future psychiatric care.
What happened
On February 6, 2015, Chamicwa Black, 33, was driving east on Guilford Road near Roxbury Road in Rockford, Illinois, in a 2001 Ford Taurus. An Anderson Automotive employee driving a 2004 Mazda RX8 swerved abruptly to the left, across the center line and into her lane. The cars collided in Black's lane. The Mazda's driver died at the scene. Black was taken to OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center and died there.
Black's estate sued Anderson Automotive in the 17th Judicial Circuit Court in Winnebago County in 2015, alleging that the employee made an improper left turn that caused the crash. She left behind her only child, then a young boy who was being raised by his grandmother, the estate's administrator. Patrick A. Salvi, Patrick A. Salvi II, Eirene N. Salvi and Aaron D. Boeder of Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard represented the estate.
Nothing in the record explained the swerve. Salvi told the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin that his team filed motions asking the company to admit that bad weather, a problem with the road, an animal or a medical emergency played no part. 'We went through every possible conceivable excuse other than the only thing you're left with, which is negligence,' he said. About a year into the case, Anderson Automotive admitted negligence. Its lawyer, Harvey A. Paulsen of Paulsen, Malec & Malartsik in Wheaton, said that with no animal, pedestrian or pothole to point to, admitting liability seemed the right call.
With fault conceded, the six-day trial before Judge J. Edward Prochaska in Rockford was about one question: what the loss of Chamicwa Black meant to her son. The parties had tried to settle at a mediation about two weeks before trial and did not. The jury returned its verdict on March 31, 2017.
The jury awarded $8 million for the boy's past and future loss of society, the companionship and guidance he lost with his mother. It awarded $3 million for his past and future grief, sorrow and mental suffering, and $250,000 for any psychiatric treatment he may need in the future. The three awards together came to $11.25 million.
The boy was 10 years old when the verdict came in. Salvi said his grandmother and guardian was very happy with the result, and that it meant the child would be provided for. 'It won't replace his mom, but at least it will take care of the financial burden,' he said.
Paulsen told the Law Bulletin that the company recognized the tragedy and how close Black was with her son, that it accepted the jury's award, and that it did not expect to file post-trial motions. The reports reviewed show no appeal.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard P.C.
All Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard P.C. proven verdicts →A Cook County jury found Sterigenics and its corporate owners liable for Sue Kamuda's breast cancer from ethylene oxide emissions and awarded $363 million, then the largest individual-plaintiff verdict in Illinois history.
Eric Johnson, a 64-year-old Missouri courier, lost consciousness and later died after carbon dioxide from dry ice-packed strawberries filled his subcompact car in 2016. His widow sued Prairie Farms Dairy for failing to warn or train him. A Madison County jury awarded $49.5 million in compensatory and $191.5 million in punitive damages in February 2026. Prairie Farms later settled with the family after the verdict.
A Cook County jury awarded Tierney Darden $148 million after a 750-pound pedestrian shelter toppled onto her at O'Hare and severed her spine, a record the city later settled for $115 million.
A Cook County jury awarded $79.85 million to the family of a 10-year-old girl killed when an unauthorized Chicago police pursuit ended in a multi-car crash, a verdict the parties later resolved for $62.5 million.
Related wrongful death verdicts
In December 2011, a Fayette County, Texas jury awarded the family of an 8-year-old Splendora boy $150.37 billion after he was doused with gasoline and set on fire by a 13-year-old neighbor in 1998, two weeks after the same neighbor sexually assaulted him. The boy survived third-degree burns over 99 percent of his body for nearly 13 years before dying in April 2011 of a skin cancer linked to his injuries. The defendant, Don Wilburn Collins, never appeared to answer the civil suit, and the jury awarded $370 million in actual damages plus roughly $150 billion in punitive damages, the largest civil verdict in U.S. history. Attorney Craig Sico, who represented the family, said from the outset that the judgment was not collectible and was intended to pressure prosecutors into reopening the long-dormant criminal case. Prosecutors did reopen the case, and Collins was later convicted of capital murder in a separate criminal proceeding.
A Pensacola jury awarded Cynthia Robinson $23.6 billion in punitive damages against R.J. Reynolds over the 1996 lung cancer death of her 36-year-old husband, the largest single-plaintiff award of Florida's Engle tobacco litigation, but the trial judge called the number constitutionally excessive, an appeals court ordered a full retrial over improper closing arguments, and a second jury returned a complete defense verdict in 2019, so the estate ultimately collected nothing.
Frantz Law Group, representing roughly 5,000 victims, helped negotiate a $13.5 billion PG&E bankruptcy settlement covering tens of thousands of survivors and families from the 2015 Butte, 2017 North Bay, and 2018 Camp wildfires.