Our firm was provided the highest rating, AV, by Martindale Hubbell, which rates firms throughout the nation.
Jim Costello and Bill Burke have been designated as “Leading Lawyers,” which purports to rate the top 5% of lawyers in Chicago.
Paul McMahon holds the Cook County record for the largest case in Illinois against a municipality, with a $50 million jury verdict. (That verdict is also our firm’s largest verdict.)
Bill Burke is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and was recognized as one of Chicago’s best trial lawyers by Chicago Magazine. Bill was also designated a “Super Lawyer.”
Bill also holds the record verdict in Cook County for an un-operated herniated disc.
Tom Plouff holds the Cook County record for the largest verdict in a slip-and-fall case and the largest verdict in a case involving a knee injury. Tom also holds the record for un-operated compression fractures.
Jim Costello and Paul McMahon obtained a favorable ruling in the nationally recognized case of Miller Parrish v. American Infertility Group. In that decision, the Circuit Court judge ruled that the next of kin of a blastocyst, conceived by way of IVF, were entitled to bring suit under Illinois’s Wrongful Death Act. That decision was the cover story on The Chicago Sun Times. It received prominent play from all four national networks (Paul appeared on the CBS Morning News), and all of the local news stations. It was then picked up by the wire services and was reported by scores of newspapers, both nationally and even as far away as India and New Zealand. The case is currently on appeal.
Paul McMahon’s $50 million-dollar verdict in the case of Gant v. City of Chicago, involving a botched call to Chicago’s 911 center, received national exposure. It was reported by all local media and nationally, and was one of the year’s most important trials, as reported in The National Law Journal.
A Chicago Sun Times article attempted to determine, objectively, which firms had tried the largest cases to verdict during the year 1998. The authors went to the Cook County Jury Verdict Reporter. Of the eight total verdicts from 1998 which were in excess of $5,000,000, our firm had two.
