About LaMar Jost
LaMar is a trial lawyer with a national practice who has brought over 50 eight- and nine-figure cases to verdict across the country. In 2024, Law Week Colorado named LaMar a Top Litigator for consistently achieving outstanding results for his clients. LaMar has been lead trial counsel in 35 states, the District of Columbia, and tribal courts, and has built a reputation as a zealous advocate nationwide. In numerous trials, his clients have been dismissed or reached favorable settlements after opening statements.
LaMar focuses his trial practice on high-stakes medical malpractice and personal injury cases. He loves trial, medicine, and his clients. He treats every client with equanimity. LaMar is willing to try the toughest cases in the most challenging jurisdictions, including a recent eight-figure verdict against the Mayo Clinic in its hometown of Rochester, Minnesota, the first of any such victory in a medical malpractice case against that world-renowned institution.
To LaMar, trial practice is about compassion, empathy, and preparedness. Together with his highly regarded trial team, LaMar takes a comprehensive approach to learning the medical issues of each case so that he can challenge top experts on even the most specialized areas of medicine and expose negligence. He believes passionately in the jury system and that jurors are the bedrock of justice. It is through them that the medical-industrial complex is held accountable when patients deserve redress for negligence that has severely, and sometimes cruelly, injured them.
LaMar is licensed in over 30 jurisdictions across the United States. He teaches trial practice and medical liability courses nationwide. He has written two books and seven book chapters in the medical-legal field. LaMar serves on legal and public-interest committees, and he routinely presents on trial practice, the current state of healthcare claims, and medical malpractice. He is highly regarded and feared for his ability to try tough cases and win for his clients.
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.
