Largest Wisconsin Personal Injury Recoveries Confirmed Paid

Power Rogers LLP recovered $100 million for Rev. Scott and Janet Willis after six of their nine children were killed when a mudflap assembly fell from a tractor-trailer on I-94 and ignited their minivan, a case that ultimately exposed an Illinois license-bribery scheme and sent Governor George Ryan to federal prison.

A Racine County jury found Hyundai's driver-seat and head-restraint design defective and awarded Edward and Susan Vanderventer $38.1 million, the largest single-plaintiff compensatory verdict in Wisconsin history, later upheld on appeal.

A Walworth County jury found Waukesha Memorial Hospital liable after a nurse pushed air into a two-week-old premature infant's IV line during a blood transfusion, sending emboli to his brain and leaving him with permanent quadriplegia and no usable speech.

Robert Habush won a $99.25 million Milwaukee County jury verdict for the widows of three ironworkers killed when the Big Blue crane collapsed at Miller Park. The appeals court vacated the $94 million punitive award, the Wisconsin Supreme Court reinstated the claim in 2005, and the widows settled in January 2006 for about $30 million.

A St. Croix County jury awarded $29 million to a Wisconsin boy born with cerebral palsy after a certified nurse-midwife failed to call the on-call obstetrician when his fetal heart rate collapsed during labor.

A Milwaukee County jury awarded $25.3 million after emergency room providers failed to tell Ascaris Mayo that her symptoms could mean a Strep A infection, an omission that cost her all four limbs, though the Wisconsin Supreme Court later reinstated the state's $750,000 cap on noneconomic damages.

A Milwaukee jury verdict and a related settlement delivered $25.24 million to a family after an unlicensed first-year resident spent 11 hours treating their teenage daughter for constipation while a twisted bowel killed the tissue it fed.

A Fitchburg family recovered $22.5 million after their six-week-old son suffered permanent brain damage during surgery at UW Health's American Family Children's Hospital. The suit alleged an anesthesia resident failed to respond to prolonged low blood pressure readings. It is the second largest payment ever made by Wisconsin's Injured Patients and Families Compensation Fund.

A six-year-old girl suffered cardiac arrest and permanent brain damage when a surgeon used a morcellator he had never operated during a routine spleen removal, and the case settled for $17.3 million, the largest sum reported to the Wisconsin Law Journal in 2009.

An Ozaukee County jury awarded the estate of Judith Cisewski $15 million after a retaining wall at her Port Washington senior living campus collapsed and buried her under concrete blocks for roughly two hours; she died the following day.

A Kenosha County jury awarded Joseph Barsuli $14.49 million after a radiologist employed by Virtual Radiologic Corporation read his cervical spine CT as normal. A second radiologist found a cervical epidural abscess on the same film the next day, and by then the damage to Barsuli's spinal cord could not be undone.

The family of a three-year-old girl who died of E. coli traced to contaminated beef at a South Milwaukee Sizzler reached a $13.5 million settlement, among the largest food-borne-illness recoveries in the country.

A consolidated federal class action alleging that Advocate Aurora Health secretly shared sensitive patient data with Meta and Google through hidden tracking pixels settled for $12.225 million, with Terence Coates and Dylan Gould of Markovits Stock and DeMarco serving as co-lead class counsel.

Cannon & Dunphy recovered $12 million for two families after an illegally overloaded cement truck ran a red light in Waukesha County, killing a van's driver and leaving a passenger with permanent brain injuries.

A Racine County jury awarded a family $10.2 million after finding that a doctor and Ascension All Saints Hospital mismanaged Pitocin during labor, causing brain damage in the newborn that has lasted into childhood.

A 10-year-old boy was left with severe brain damage after the arterial and venous lines of a heart-lung machine were connected in reverse during open-heart surgery, and Cannon & Dunphy resolved the case for $10 million, reported as the first eight-figure personal injury settlement in Wisconsin history.

A physician's morphine overdose left an 8-month-old boy at a La Crosse County, Wisconsin hospital with permanent brain damage, and the family's medical-malpractice claim resolved in a $10 million settlement handled by Cannon & Dunphy.

An 11-year-old boy lost his left arm in a commercial Laundromat washer whose door could be opened mid-cycle, and Cannon & Dunphy reached a multimillion-dollar product-liability recovery against the Belgian manufacturer and the machine's suppliers.

Terrill Thomas, a 38-year-old Milwaukee man with a history of bipolar disorder, died of dehydration in the Milwaukee County Jail in April 2016 after a jail lieutenant ordered the water to his cell shut off for a week as punishment for flooding a previous cell. He lost 34 pounds before he was found dead on April 24, 2016. His estate sued Milwaukee County and the jail's medical contractor, Armor Correctional Health Services, in federal court, and the case settled in March 2019 for $6.75 million, split $5 million from the county and $1.75 million from Armor. The money was divided among Thomas's six children, several of them minors.

A federal jury in Milwaukee awarded three men poisoned by lead paint as children $6 million against Sherwin-Williams, DuPont, and Armstrong, a verdict the Seventh Circuit later reversed.

Ted Warshafsky won a $4,983,966 award for a 9-year-old boy left with brain damage after a near-fatal car crash, the largest personal injury recovery in Wisconsin history at the time.

Habush Habush & Rottier recovered $4.5 million for a Green Bay woman whose left leg was amputated after a Veolia Solid Waste Midwest garbage truck ran her over in a downtown crosswalk while she had the walk signal.

A Milwaukee County jury awarded a sexual assault survivor $4.1 million, including $1 million in punitive damages, against Karlos Soriano-Cabrera, the former C-Viche restaurateur already convicted and imprisoned for assaulting multiple women.

Benjamin Wagner and Molly Lavin of Habush Habush & Rottier won a $4 million punitive damages verdict in Kenosha County after Helen Ende, an 89-year-old dementia patient, wandered out of a short-staffed assisted living facility and died of hypothermia.