About Craig Sico
Craig M. Sico is a name partner at Sico Hoelscher Harris LLP in Corpus Christi and is board certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Before law school he worked in advanced management at Exxon Company, U.S.A., experience he draws on in industrial and energy-related litigation. He handles personal injury, product liability, workplace injury, trucking, aviation, and commercial disputes, including insurance bad faith and class actions, and has tried complex cases in courts across multiple states. His verdicts include the $301.1 billion award in Anderson v. Beer Belly's, the $150 billion Middleton v. Collins verdict
- a $125 million verdict in Gaytan Pina v. Los Pasianos Autobuses
- a $122 million result against Coastal Corporation
- a $34 million verdict in Ibarra v. LG Electronics
- and a $27.5 million verdict in Flores v. Walmart
He has also served as a special prosecutor and taken cases pro bono. Sico is a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates and the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, holds an AV rating from Martindale-Hubbell, and has been recognized by Super Lawyers. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas and his law degree from the University of Houston, and was admitted to the Texas bar in 1991.
Proven verdicts and settlements
On December 7, 2021, a Nueces County jury in Corpus Christi returned $1.04 billion in actual damages and $300 billion in exemplary damages, about $301.04 billion in total, against Beer Belly's Sports Bar and its owner for overserving a driver who killed Tamra Kay Kindred, 59, and her 16-year-old granddaughter in a 2017 crash. It was reported as the largest jury verdict ever recorded, and it was built to be symbolic: the bar had closed in 2019, Texas does not require bars to carry liquor liability insurance, and the family and its lawyers said openly that they expected to recover nothing and sought the number as a public statement against drunk driving. John Flood of Flood Trial Lawyers was lead counsel, with Sico, Hoelscher & Harris LLP as co-counsel; Craig Sico delivered the closing argument that asked jurors to decide how loudly their voice would be heard.
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.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
