About Courtney Rowley
Courtney Rowley is a mother, trial lawyer, and author. She has built her career and reputation on representing regular people against insurance defense companies and corporations. She views the jury system as fundamental to maintaining a healthy democracy. Courtney has achieved notable success by obtaining substantial verdicts and settlements in personal injury, employment law, wrongful death, toxic exposure, and medical malpractice.
Courtney is the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles’ Trial Lawyer of the Year for 2025.
Recently, Courtney has joined a team of lawyers in prosecuting Monsanto, an international chemical corporation, for its toxic injuries to women and children of the Sky Valley School System in Washington, U.S. Two recent cases she was involved in resulted in verdicts of $275 million and $100 million. These were part of a series of trials that ultimately led Monsanto and Bayer to settle the PCB cases against Sky Valley plaintiffs.
Courtney has authored four books, including Trial By Woman, which can be found on Amazon, Voir Dire and Opening Statement, Running with the Bulls: How to Win Top Dollar Settlements, and Damages Evolving with David Ball and Artemis Malekpour.
Courtney is the owner of The Rowley Law Firm, a member of Trial Lawyers for Justice, and a founder of Trial By Woman, a nonprofit organization designed to empower, support, and educate women in business and leadership. She is an advocate for civil rights and the importance of equity, both inside the courtroom and out. She has obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in verdicts and settlements for clients from states across the country. Her focus is on the clients themselves, as human beings. She finds that by spending time, getting to honestly know her clients and honoring their dignity as individuals, she is better able to translate their experience to juries.
Courtney practices with her husband, Nick Rowley, founder of Trial by Human and Trial Lawyers for Justice. Nick and Courtney Rowley have been honored with numerous awards for their work in improving healthcare and expanding the civil rights of medical malpractice victims. They are the recipients of the Consumer Watchdog Rage for Justice Lifetime Achievement Award to honor their work in public interest, specifically their work to reduce and change a 45-year medical malpractice caps statute to expand all injured persons’ civil rights, especially for women and people of color.
Courtney and Nick are the producers of Making a Killing, a documentary about the injustices patients face when insurance defense corporations control access to the courts. “This agreement signals the end to one of the most longstanding battles in California politics, and strikes a fair balance protecting patients,” Gavin Newsom said in a written statement.
Proven verdicts and settlements at Trial Lawyers for Justice
These results are credited to Trial Lawyers for Justice. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
Carrie DeJongh, 40, of Hull, Iowa, died on June 9, 2015 after receiving iodinated contrast dye for a CT scan at Sioux Center Health, when the physician treating her gave her an antihistamine but did not immediately check her vital signs or give epinephrine. Her family sued Sioux Center Health and Dr. Roy T. Slice for negligence, and both defendants denied the allegations. A Sioux County jury in Orange City returned a $29.5 million verdict on June 13, 2018, covering DeJongh's pain and suffering before her death and loss of consortium for her husband and four children. No appeal, remittitur or reduction has turned up since.
In February 2017, a physician assistant at a UnityPoint urgent care clinic in Des Moines diagnosed Joseph Dudley with the flu despite a negative flu test, sent him home on Tamiflu, and never ordered a complete blood count. Two days later Dudley was hospitalized with bacterial meningitis caused by an undetected heart valve infection, spent eight days in a medically induced coma, and suffered a series of strokes that left him with permanent brain damage, hearing loss, vertigo and nerve damage. A Polk County jury tried the malpractice claim against physician assistant Melanie Choos and Central Iowa Hospital Corp, doing business as UnityPoint Clinic, over a week in November 2022 and returned a $27,000,000 verdict, all of it noneconomic damages. The defense moved for a new trial afterward and UnityPoint said it was weighing an appeal.
Richard J. Pellock, 80, had surgery to remove bladder cancer at UnityPoint Health Finley Hospital in Dubuque, Iowa in January 2015, and the operation succeeded. Days later he needed a second procedure for a post-surgical complication, and the nurse anesthetist handling that procedure induced anesthesia without first emptying his stomach despite signs he had a full one. Pellock aspirated, developed aspiration pneumonia and respiratory failure, and died. His widow and son sued the anesthesia group and a Dubuque County jury returned a $10 million verdict against it in September 2017, awarded entirely as loss-of-consortium damages. Defense lawyers were reported as saying they would challenge the verdict, but no Iowa appellate decision in the case has ever been published.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
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