Top Individual Iowa Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements

Iowa Jury Awards $29.5 Million Over Fatal Reaction to Contrast Dye

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.

Iowa Jury Awards $27 Million Over Delayed Meningitis Diagnosis

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.

After trial: UnityPoint said after the verdict it was 'exploring all options including an appeal,' and its attorneys filed a post-trial motion for a new trial, which the Dudleys resisted. We could not confirm from any public source how that motion was resolved, whether an appeal was ever docketed, or whether the judgment has been paid, so collectability is recorded as not public. No Iowa appellate court has issued a ruling or opinion in the case in the years since, and there is no public record of a remittitur or of the judgment being reduced, so the jury's award is the outcome of record. The claim accrued in February 2017, before Iowa's noneconomic damages cap for health care providers (Iowa Code section 147.136A) took effect on July 1, 2017, so no statutory cap applied to this award; the same facts today would fall under that cap because the defendants include a hospital.

Iowa Supreme Court Affirms $26.1 Million Judgment In Fog-Related Truck Underride Crash

On March 19, 2020, an eighteen-wheel semitrailer driven by Clifford Takes for West Side Transport made an unprotected left turn across fog-shrouded Highway 151 near Anamosa, Iowa, and Margaret McQuillen's southbound car slid under the trailer. McQuillen, then 18, lost her pulse before paramedics arrived and was later found to have suffered a traumatic brain injury and roughly 100 skull fractures. A Linn County jury found Takes and West Side Transport 73 percent at fault and McQuillen 27 percent at fault, and set her damages at $35,793,475 in June 2024; the district court entered judgment for $26,129,236.80 after the comparative-fault reduction. West Side Transport and Takes appealed over closing-argument and damages-argument rulings, and the Iowa Supreme Court affirmed the judgment on April 3, 2026.

After trial: The jury returned $35,793,475 in June 2024, and the district court reduced it under Iowa's comparative-fault statute to $26,129,236.80 after the jury found McQuillen 27 percent at fault. West Side Transport and Takes appealed, and the Iowa Supreme Court affirmed the judgment in full on April 3, 2026. The McQuillens argued the appeal was moot because the parties had settled, but the court found the letters they submitted showed only an arrangement for the defendants' insurers to make payments on the judgment, not a complete settlement, so it decided the appeal on the merits. The judgment is insurer-backed on the strength of that payment arrangement, but public records do not confirm whether it has been paid in full since the affirmance.

Iowa Jury Awards $13.6 Million to Man Paralyzed by Off-Duty Officer Running Red Light at 61 MPH

A Black Hawk County jury returned a $13.6 million verdict for Jarvis Lee Boggs, paralyzed when a Waterloo police officer ran a red light at 61 mph without lights or siren and slammed into his car at 12:45 a.m. on New Year's Eve 2008.

Dubuque Jury Awards $10 Million Over Fatal Aspiration During Anesthesia

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.

After trial: Defense counsel were reported after trial as intending to seek post-trial relief and, failing that, an appeal. No Iowa appellate decision in the case has ever been published, and no appellate docket for it appears in CourtListener or in the Iowa appellate reporters, so we treat the verdict as what stood. We could not confirm from a public record whether the judgment was paid, so collectability is recorded as not public.

$8 Million Settlement for Man Paralyzed by Cedar Rapids Police Officer

Cedar Rapids' insurer paid $8 million to Jerime Mitchell, a quadriplegic man shot by Officer Lucas Jones during a 2016 traffic stop, in what attorneys described as the largest police-misconduct settlement in Iowa history.

The Jury Put $250,000 on What He Suffered Before He Died and $5.25 Million on What His Family Lost Afterwards.

Ross Hall died after what his family alleged was negligent cardiology care. The jury awarded $5,500,000, and the allocation is the striking part: only $250,000 for his own pain and suffering before death, and the remaining $5.25 million to his widow and three children for what they lost.

After trial: The verdict stands at $5,500,000 and no Iowa appellate opinion exists for this case anywhere in the 2019 to 2026 archive, so no appeal is recorded. Trial was November 22, 2021 in the Iowa District Court for Scott County, No. LACE130184, Judge Stuart P. Werling. The award divides as $250,000 for the decedent's pre-death pain and suffering, $2,250,000 for spousal loss of consortium and three separate $1,000,000 awards for parental loss of consortium; every one of the derivative awards arises from the single death, which is why this is recorded as an individual-scope result. One open point of precision: the date of the alleged negligence was not established, and it determines which sentence about the cap is strictly correct. If it predates July 1, 2017, Iowa Code § 147.136A did not exist and no cap applied. If it falls between July 1, 2017 and February 15, 2023, the $250,000 cap was displaced because the case involved death, and the pre-2023 exception carried no ceiling. The full $5,500,000 stands either way, which is why the entry is published, but the date should be confirmed before the cap history is described more tightly than this. For an occurrence on or after February 16, 2023 the same award would be capped at $1,000,000, since no Iowa Code § 135B.1 hospital was a named defendant and the $2,000,000 tier would not apply.

$1.8 Million Verdict for Sound Engineer Run Over by State Forklift at Luke Bryan Concert Teardown

A Black Hawk County jury awarded $1.8 million to Massachusetts sound engineer Frank Sgambellone after a State of Iowa forklift operator ran over his ankle during post-concert teardown at the UNI-Dome in February 2016.

Iowa Jury Puts a Family's Loss at $1.8 Million in Underinsured Motorist Trial

An eastbound SUV drifted onto the shoulder of Iowa Highway 141 east of Sloan on November 22, 2014, overcorrected, and crossed into the westbound lane, hitting a pickup head on. Five people died, among them Myrna Malone, 70, who was riding beside her husband Larry. The at-fault driver carried too little liability coverage to pay for the losses, so Larry Malone, individually and as administrator of his wife's estate, sued the family's own underinsured motorist carrier, American Family Mutual Insurance Company, for breach of contract in Polk County. The jury's verdict form, filed September 21, 2017, valued the loss of spousal consortium at $1,300,000 and the loss of parental consortium at $250,000 for each of the couple's two adult children, $1,800,000 in all. No appeal followed.

After trial: No appeal was located in Iowa Court of Appeals or Iowa Supreme Court records after the September 2017 verdict, and no post-trial reduction appears in the filings collected with the Iowa State Bar Association verdict report. One caveat on collection: this was a contract trial against an underinsured motorist carrier, and the jury was asked to appraise the family's total loss rather than to enter a sum certain against the insurer. What American Family Mutual Insurance Company ultimately paid under the policy, after the credits and coverage limits the contract and Iowa law apply, is not public.

Dallas County Jury Awards $79,895 to Motor Vehicle Passenger Lorene Arbuckle

A Dallas County jury returned a $79,895.55 plaintiff verdict in December 2019 in a motor vehicle personal injury case, with Richard Schmidt and Dustin Mueller of Mueller Schmidt Mulholland and Cooling, PLLC, representing passenger Lorene Arbuckle against defendant Jocelyn Anne Kirchner.