James Wilkes

A Polk County jury awarded $110 million in compensatory damages and $1 billion in punitive damages over the death of 69-year-old Arlene Townsend, who fell 17 times at the Auburndale Oaks Healthcare Center, in a Wilkes & McHugh case against Trans Healthcare entities that had defaulted, stopped defending, and were already insolvent and in receivership, which is why the judgment was largely symbolic and the estate ultimately recovered only a small share of a later multi-estate settlement.

A Gainesville jury awarded $900 million, including $700 million in punitive damages, to stroke survivor Joseph Webb over neglect at the University Place Care and Rehabilitation Center, in a Wilkes & McHugh case tried against defaulted Trans Healthcare entities with no defense present, but Florida's First District Court of Appeal reversed the judgment in 2013 because the trial court had refused to let a defense lawyer appear, and the money was never collected; the estate's claim was later resolved for a small share of a multi-estate bankruptcy settlement.

A Pinellas County jury awarded $60 million in compensatory and $140 million in punitive damages over the death of 92-year-old Elvira Nunziata, who tumbled down a stairwell still strapped in her wheelchair at the Pinellas Park Care and Rehab Center, in a Wilkes & McHugh case where the defunct operator Trans Health Management presented no defense at all, meaning the record-setting sum was symbolic from the start; the estate later recovered only a share of a modest multi-estate bankruptcy settlement.

Margaretha Sauer, a 93-year-old resident of Rich Mountain Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Mena, Arkansas, died in July 1998 after five and a half years in the facility's care. Her estate sued the nursing home's corporate owners for negligence, medical malpractice, breach of contract, and wrongful death, presenting evidence of chronic understaffing, untreated weight loss and dehydration, and unaddressed pressure sores. A Polk County jury returned combined judgments of $78,425,000, reported at the time as the largest verdict against an Arkansas nursing home. The Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed liability on condition of remittitur, cutting the negligence and malpractice damages to $5,000,000 and the punitive award to $21,000,000, and the United States Supreme Court denied review in November 2003, leaving the reduced judgment final.

A 16-year-old student athlete passed out while exercising on a treadmill at IMG Academies' Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Florida, and died of cardiac arrest. His family sued IMG Academies, the academy's staff physician and its nurse, claiming they failed to adequately monitor and treat his heart condition. After a 15-day trial in Manatee County in October 2009, a jury awarded $1.5 million, $500,000 for past damages and $1,000,000 for future damages, then apportioned fault 18 percent each to IMG Academies, the physician and the nurse, and 46 percent to the boy's mother, who brought the claim. That split cut what the three defendants owed to 54 percent of the award. Attorneys from what was then Wilkes & McHugh, P.A., now Wilkes & Associates, P.A., tried the case for the family.