Largest Wyoming Personal Injury Recoveries Confirmed Paid
Personal injury results in Wyoming where the record shows the money was paid, or the defendant is an insurer or institution that pays, ranked by amount.
Browse personal injury lawyers in Wyoming →- $957,750Reduced from $1.3 millionPaidWorkplace Injury
$957,750 Judgment for BNSF Locomotive Engineer Struck by Contractor Van at Wyoming Coal Mine
A BNSF locomotive engineer was hit by a contractor's van that backed into him while his crew waited for a train at the North Antelope Mines in Wyoming. A federal jury in Casper put 75 percent of the fault on BNSF and 25 percent on the engineer, and the court entered judgment for $957,750. The judge denied BNSF's request for a new trial, BNSF dropped its appeal, and the judgment was satisfied in November 2018.
After trial: The jury put 25 percent of the fault on Buechler, so the court entered judgment for the 75 percent share, $957,750, and denied BNSF's new-trial motion on October 26, 2018. BNSF appealed, but the parties stipulated to dismiss the appeal in November 2018.
Fitzgerald Law Firm2018 · U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming, CasperRead the full story → - $756,000VerdictReduced from $1.2 millionPaidWorkplace Injury
Chevron Pays $756,000 Judgment After Wyoming Jury Finds It Mostly at Fault in a Truck Driver's Fatal Fall
A federal jury in Casper found Chevron U.S.A. Inc. negligent in the February 2014 death of truck driver Thomas Coffey, who fell while loading molten sulfur from a three rail safety cage at Chevron's Glencoe Terminal near Kemmerer, Wyoming. The bottom rail of the cage was missing. The jury awarded Coffey's widow, Sharon Coffey, $1.2 million in wrongful death damages and apportioned fault at 63 percent to Chevron, 37 percent to Coffey's employer, and none to Coffey. Because Wyoming makes each actor answerable only for its own share of fault, the court entered judgment against Chevron for $756,000, which Chevron paid within the month. Noah W. Drew and Tyson Logan of The Spence Law Firm represented the widow.
After trial: Reduced and paid. The jury's $1.2 million finding was cut to Chevron's 63 percent share of fault, giving a $756,000 judgment entered March 2, 2017.
The Spence Law Firm2017 · U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming (Casper)Read the full story →
12 results, largest first
After a seven-day bench trial in Sublette County, a Wyoming district court awarded APMTG Helium $35,199,276.79 against Denbury Onshore for failing to deliver helium under a long-term supply contract, and the Wyoming Supreme Court upheld the award in December 2020.
A Wyoming jury awarded $22 million after coal miner Les Butts was left paraplegic when a boulder crushed his vehicle at Black Thunder Mine; the Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed a $9.46 million judgment against his supervisors in June 2008.
A Wyoming federal jury returned an $8 million verdict against SmithKline Beecham after finding that Paxil caused a Gillette man to kill three family members and himself within 48 hours of taking the drug.
A federal jury in Wyoming awarded Amber Lompe $28.2 million after carbon monoxide from a faulty furnace caused permanent brain injury at her Casper apartment, a verdict that stood as one of the largest personal-injury awards in Wyoming history before the Tenth Circuit reduced the punitive component on due-process grounds.
A Sweetwater County jury returned a $5.19 million verdict for oilfield worker Blake Horr after a rubber well component, ejected by trapped pressure that Merit Energy's supervisor failed to relieve, shattered bones and severed nerves in his left hand and arm during a 2011 work-over operation in Bairoil, Wyoming.
William Gray Jr., 62, was riding a motorcycle through a Casper highway construction zone in September 2017 when a left-turning driver collided with him; he died sixteen days later. A Natrona County jury found the general contractor Knife River 60 percent at fault, its traffic-control subcontractor RoadWorx 30 percent, and the driver 10 percent. The $2.2 million award, reduced by the driver's share, left about $1.98 million for his widow and adult daughter. The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed in 2022.
Jim Fitzgerald won a $1.5 million jury verdict for the family of a construction worker killed when his 1966 Caterpillar 988 wheel loader rolled over without rollover protection, a judgment the Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed in full.
A Green River jury returned a $10.165 million verdict for a Rock Springs man whose legs were amputated after Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County and its physician failed to recognize and treat an acute vascular emergency.
A Natrona County jury found that Casper tire shop Tire-Rama shared responsibility for a 2019 truck crash that injured Nicholas Skalicky, awarding him $6.1 million and his wife $300,000 after eight days of trial. Skalicky argued the shop's technicians had failed to verify the brakes on a tractor-trailer before releasing it to the driver who rear-ended him. The jury apportioned 85 percent of the fault to that driver, who had already been dismissed from the case, leaving Tire-Rama liable for its 15 percent share, about $960,000. Jason Ochs of Ochs Law Firm represented Skalicky at trial.
A BNSF locomotive engineer was hit by a contractor's van that backed into him while his crew waited for a train at the North Antelope Mines in Wyoming. A federal jury in Casper put 75 percent of the fault on BNSF and 25 percent on the engineer, and the court entered judgment for $957,750. The judge denied BNSF's request for a new trial, BNSF dropped its appeal, and the judgment was satisfied in November 2018.
A federal jury in Casper found Chevron U.S.A. Inc. negligent in the February 2014 death of truck driver Thomas Coffey, who fell while loading molten sulfur from a three rail safety cage at Chevron's Glencoe Terminal near Kemmerer, Wyoming. The bottom rail of the cage was missing. The jury awarded Coffey's widow, Sharon Coffey, $1.2 million in wrongful death damages and apportioned fault at 63 percent to Chevron, 37 percent to Coffey's employer, and none to Coffey. Because Wyoming makes each actor answerable only for its own share of fault, the court entered judgment against Chevron for $756,000, which Chevron paid within the month. Noah W. Drew and Tyson Logan of The Spence Law Firm represented the widow.
Jim and Michael Fitzgerald secured a Wyoming Supreme Court ruling that the state's governmental-immunity waiver covers ordinary negligence claims against state healthcare facilities, allowing a family's civil suit to proceed after their daughter was sexually assaulted by a hospital employee.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.