Largest Iowa Personal Injury Settlements

A Johnson County, Iowa jury awarded the family of an infant identified in court records by the initials S.K. $97.4 million in March 2022, finding an OB-GYN clinic and a hospital equally responsible for a delivery gone wrong at Mercy Hospital in Iowa City in August 2018. The verdict, then the largest medical malpractice award in Iowa history, followed a 14-day trial before Judge Kevin McKeever of the Sixth Judicial District. Mercy Hospital's share was capped at $7 million under a pretrial agreement, which the hospital paid; court filings put the clinic's share of the judgment at more than $75.6 million. The clinic, Obstetric & Gynecologic Associates of Iowa City and Coralville, P.C., did not pay, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October 2022, saw that case dismissed the following April, and appealed. On November 8, 2024, the Iowa Supreme Court reversed the judgment against the clinic over an evidentiary error and ordered a new trial. Nothing currently stands against the clinic, and no new trial date has been reported.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In March 2009 a federal jury in Iowa found that flavoring maker Givaudan Flavors Corp. failed to warn of the dangers of inhaling diacetyl and awarded about $7.5 million to Ronald Kuiper and his wife, Conley. Kuiper, a butter flavor mixer at a Sioux City microwave popcorn plant, had bronchiolitis obliterans and died the day before the verdict. About $6 million of the award went to him and $1.5 million to his wife.

A Waterloo man lost all feeling below the waist after a cervical radiofrequency ablation at the C5-6 level in December 2014. A Black Hawk County jury found Dr. Ashar Afzal and Cedar Valley Medical Specialists negligent and awarded $7.36 million to him and his wife. The Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed in 2021.

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.

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.

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.

A Cerro Gordo County jury found Good Shepherd, a Mason City nursing home, negligent and willful and wanton in its care of an 84-year-old dementia resident who lost 43 pounds and died of dehydration in April 2015. It awarded her four children $150,000 in compensatory and $750,000 in punitive damages. The Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed in 2018.

Seven adult children of an 84-year-old resident of Mill Valley Care Center in Jackson County, Iowa, sued after she fell from the toilet in January 2016 and died five days later of head injuries. A jury found the home negligent in December 2019 and awarded $800,000 in compensatory damages plus $1.37 million in punitive damages. The trial court set aside the punitive award, and the Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed in 2021, so the $800,000 compensatory award stood.

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.

A Warren County jury returned a $6,000 verdict for plaintiffs Jonna Audino and Trenton Shever following a motor vehicle collision, with Hannah Moreland and Dustin Mueller of Mueller Schmidt Mulholland and Cooling trying the case to verdict in April 2024.

The Iowa Supreme Court reversed the dismissal of state common law claims brought by the estate of Brent Boggess, a man fatally shot by a Waterloo police officer in November 2021, and remanded the case for further proceedings in district court.

A Dubuque County jury determined damages for an injured plaintiff in a November 2021 underinsured motorist trial against Allstate Property and Casualty, with Allstate having already admitted liability before the case went to the jury, and Connor Mulholland of Mueller Schmidt Mulholland and Cooling, PLLC representing the plaintiff.

A 1984 Polk County jury became the first in the nation to hold polyvinyl chloride wire insulation liable for fire deaths, finding six companies negligent in the 1978 blaze that killed ten Younkers department store employees.