$10 Million Cook County Verdict for Dentist Who Developed Bilateral CRPS After Walgreens Hand-Truck Strike

On March 26, 2012, a 50-year-old dentist stopped at a Walgreens pharmacy in Lincolnwood, Illinois, to pick up a prescription. While she was in the store, a delivery employee for Dean Transportation was moving a hand truck loaded with roughly 350 pounds of Dean's milk. The crates were stacked high enough to block the worker's line of sight, and he gave no warning to customers in the aisle. The hand truck struck the woman in the right calf.

The initial blow did not seem catastrophic. Over the weeks and months that followed, however, the pain in her right leg did not fade. Physicians diagnosed Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, a chronic neurological condition in which the nervous system generates unrelenting pain far beyond what any underlying tissue damage would ordinarily produce. The CRPS then spread to her left leg and both feet through a process known as mirror-image spreading. By the time the case reached trial, she was managing a 'chronic unstoppable burning sensation' in both lower extremities with high-dose morphine and a surgically implanted spinal cord stimulator.

Clifford Horwitz of Horwitz, Horwitz and Associates filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court against Dean Transportation. The complaint alleged two related failures: that the delivery worker pushed the hand truck through a customer area without warning anyone, and that the crates were stacked so high that the worker could not see where he was going. Dean Transportation eventually withdrew its affirmative defenses after trial began, conceding negligence, but contested causation and insisted the employee's actions had not caused the plaintiff's CRPS.

The eight-day trial turned on the question of whether CRPS was a foreseeable consequence of the collision and whether its bilateral spread was genuine. Horwitz and co-counsel Michael Carter presented the liability and medical evidence. The jury did not accept the defense causation argument.

On September 15, 2016, all twelve jurors returned a unanimous verdict of $10 million. The Illinois Jury Verdict Reporter confirmed it as the largest CRPS injury verdict in Illinois history to that point. No appellate reduction has been reported.