Boone County Jury Awards $9 Million to Family of Father and Son Killed by Company Truck at Stop Sign
After trial: The verdict was returned November 13, 2020. We found no appeal or post-trial reduction, but could not confirm whether the judgment was paid.
Won by Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard P.C..
A Boone County, Illinois jury awarded $9 million to the family of a 52-year-old father and his 22-year-old son, both killed in March 2018 when a Consolidated Materials employee drove a Ford F550 through a stop sign in Flora. The company admitted liability before trial. It was the highest jury verdict on record in the county.
What happened
On the morning of March 26, 2018, Pedro Pasillas-Delgado, 22, was driving south on South Quarry Road near its intersection with Bloods Point Road in Flora, Illinois. His father, Pedro Pasillas-Sanchez, 52, was riding with him. Both men were killed at the scene.
A Consolidated Materials, Inc. employee was driving a Ford F550 west on Bloods Point Road. The driver did not stop at the stop sign and went through the intersection, striking the Pasillas vehicle. Both vehicles flipped. The company's driver was treated for minor injuries.
The case went to a Boone County jury in the fall of 2020, one of the few civil jury trials held during the COVID-19 pandemic. Consolidated Materials admitted liability before trial, so the jury's task was to decide what the loss of the two men was worth to the family they left behind. The survivors were Pedro Sr.'s widow, Maria Enriqueta Pasillas, who was also Pedro Jr.'s mother, and four school-aged children.
Patrick A. Salvi led the family's trial team, with Brian L. Salvi and Eirene N. Salvi trying the case alongside him. The family had turned down a pretrial settlement offer from the company and chose to put the question to a jury.
On Friday, November 13, 2020, the jury returned a verdict of $9 million for the Pasillas family. It was the largest jury verdict on record in Boone County, where the previous high had been $1,075,000. Illinois does not cap damages in wrongful death cases, so the full amount of the verdict was available to the family.
After the verdict, Salvi said the family hoped to have some degree of closure and move forward with their lives, and that the award would ease their financial worries even though it could not replace a husband, a son, a father and a brother. Searches turned up no appeal or post-trial reduction of the verdict.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.WIFR / Rockford News First, 'Jury awards $9 million to family of father, son killed in Boone Co. crash', Nov. 16, 2020·Archived copy
- 2.FOX 32 Chicago, 'Jury awards family of father, 22-year-old son killed in collision $9M, highest on record in Boone County', Nov. 2020·Archived copy
- 3.Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard P.C. (firm)·Archived copy
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