7-Eleven Pays $91 Million to Bensenville Man Who Lost Both Legs Outside Its Store

On September 20, 2017, a driver outside a 7-Eleven in Bensenville, Illinois, pressed the accelerator instead of the brake. The car jumped the curb, crossed the sidewalk, and pinned a 57-year-old man against the front of the store. Surgeons amputated both of his legs above the knee. He was hospitalized for a month. He asked to be identified publicly only as Carl.

Power Rogers LLP attorneys Joseph A. Power Jr., Larry Rogers Jr., and James Power, alongside co-counsel Louis Berns of Favil David Berns and Associates, filed suit against 7-Eleven Inc. in Cook County Circuit Court. The theory was not that the driver was blameless, but that 7-Eleven knew storefront crashes were a recurring, foreseeable hazard and had done nothing to protect pedestrians at that location.

Discovery produced the central piece of evidence: internal 7-Eleven data showing approximately 6,253 storefront crashes at its U.S. locations between 2003 and 2017, plus an additional 1,525 crashes documented in earlier litigation from 1991 to 1996. The data showed that a different vehicle had already struck the same Bensenville store 16 months before Carl was injured. The plaintiff's team argued that bollards, the steel posts commonly installed in front of businesses to stop errant vehicles, were a standard, inexpensive countermeasure that 7-Eleven had declined to use.

7-Eleven maintained that the accident was caused by a reckless driver who later pleaded guilty, and that its store had complied with all local building codes and ordinances. The company also resisted turning over its national crash data during discovery.

The settlement was reached on February 8, 2023, the day a jury trial was scheduled to begin. The $91 million figure was reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, NBC Chicago, and trade publications covering the convenience-store industry as the largest pretrial personal injury settlement in Illinois history. No appellate reduction has been reported.

The case drew attention within the convenience-store industry. The Storefront Safety Council has estimated that vehicle-into-building crashes occur roughly 20 times per day at stores across the United States.