Tom has tried many cases for our firm, including several multimillion-dollar verdicts. Most recently, he won a 35-million-dollar verdict against Johnson & Johnson/ Ethicon when they failed to warn patients and physicians concerning a negligently designed transvaginal mesh device. The verdict was included in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin.
You can learn more about the 35-million-dollar verdict at https://ploufflaw.com/cases/. Since then:
- $1.5 million verdict for a client in car accident who then had a cervical surgery, which his treating doctor testified would have been necessary regardless of accident;
- Pretrial settlements amounted to $500,000.00, and then during the trial, the two remaining defendants settled before the jury returned a verdict for a client injured when he stepped off a loading dock;
- $2.5 million settlement for a union laborer who suffered PTSD after riding atop a runaway train car through a dark tunnel.
Tom’s record of achieving the compensation his clients deserve extends throughout his career, including these cases:
- $4.4 million on behalf of a union electrician who was injured when he tried to move a heavy steel beam blocking the path of an aerial lift truck. The beam fell crushing his foot;
- $11.11 million jury verdict in a medical malpractice case involving failure to diagnose bacterial meningitis in an adult;
- $5.36 million, the record knee injury verdict in Illinois, on behalf of a union plumber who fell on a slippery surface at a construction site;
- $1.2 million, largest jury verdict for an unoperated compression fracture for a lumbar disk on behalf of a union tile setter who fell off a bucket used as a ladder.
- $4.1 million settlement when woman dies following explosion in her work area that failed to have code required fire protection measures.
After graduating from Notre Dame Law School with distinction, Tom worked for the Federal Trade Commission as an antitrust litigation attorney, then as a trial attorney with the U.S. Justice Department, Tax Division, and before joining our firm in 1993, he prosecuted white-collar fraud cases as an Assistant United States Attorney. His last case with the United States Attorney’s Office was even the basis for an episode on Law & Order (Season 3, episode 4): where previously used heart pacemakers were re-sold as new. Tom has also taught trial advocacy to law students at various law schools since 1989, including Notre Dame, and has been a faculty member of the National Institute For Trial Advocacy. He is a Member of the American Board of Trial Advocates, a select national association of experienced trial attorneys. Tom is admitted to the state bars of Alabama, Illinois, and Indiana.