An army of safety managers patrolled the construction site of a massive proton-simulator project put together by the Department of Energy. They walked past as ironworkers erected tall Doka walls, which towered over the building’s concrete basement floor. James, an all-American blue collar worker, had never climbed a Doka wall before, but everyone, including his employer, assumed he had. They sent James up with a harness, but when he arrived at the top of the wall, he discovered there were no anchorage points. Perched at the top and confused about where to anchor off, it didn’t take long for the site’s failures to catch up to James. Without an OSHA approved anchorage point, he was quickly running out of time. While trying to figure out how to secure himself, his feet slipped out from under him. He fell 23 feet, his arm collided with a crossbeam, and he smashed into the hard concrete slab with a sickening thud.
The fall shattered James’s ribs, vertebrae, and skull, and inflicted a huge hematoma under his scalp. He suffered a traumatic brain injury that left him with numerous cognitive issues. The arm that had hit the crossbeam suffered some of the worst of his lingering damage. Fractures webbed the scapula, and the nerves in his shoulders sustained intense injury. He ultimately developed complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) on the damaged arm. The chronic condition rendered his hand hypersensitive and nonfunctional. To mitigate his suffering, James required over 25 surgeries, including invasive procedures to place two spinal cord stimulators. The totality of his injuries rendered him incapable of working, distraught at being unable to provide for his family, and doomed to a life of constant pain. He was only 46 years old.
A week after the fall, James’s family reached out to Louis A. Cairo, partner at GWC Injury Lawyers. While advocating for James, Louis also represented his wife with a loss of consortium claim. GWC was well equipped to handle James’s case, given its specialization in construction negligence in catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases. Louis and his team met James at the hospital and documented the severity of his injuries so that future jurors could fully understand his suffering. Louis knew the well-funded defense team already had a head start given their unlimited access to the construction site. To preserve evidence, he moved to shut down the job site immediately. In doing so, he discovered footage of the superintendent looking up at James before the fall and walking past without ensuring James was properly secured.
The defense’s default position was to deny and delay. They argued that James should have found somewhere to tie off. Louis took nearly three dozen depositions to nail down the liability aspect of the case. He discovered that rules state iron workers must only tie off on OSHA-approved anchorage points, because a false tie could be worse than no tie-off at all. He also learned that the foreman and superintendent had climbed the walls in the previous days without ever tying off. These violations occurred despite the presence of five safety representatives at the construction site.
With the defense’s posture on liability weakened, Louis shifted his focus to James’s damages. He brought on an OSHA regulation expert to weigh in about liability, a structural engineer, an economist, a vocational rehabilitation expert, a billing expert, and a life care planner. From the beginning, Louis’s strategy was to prepare the case for trial, and he knew James’s CRPS was largely an “invisible injury” to jurors. Written medical records and testimony could only go so far in capturing James’s lifelong suffering. Thus, Louis turned to DK Global early in the case’s inception. He tasked DK Global with creating animated medical illustrations to show the full scope of James’s internal injuries.
The 19-minute DK Global visual opened with the construction site footage of James’s fall, which then transitioned into a 3D rendering of his body. Each of the plaintiff’s injuries was highlighted on his body and correlated with screenshots of his radiological imaging. The fractures throughout his skeleton, along with his soft tissues, internal organs, and nerve injuries, were illustrated on the 3D model. Each symptom of CRPS was color-coded as it related to James. Animated medical models demonstrated how nerve dysfunction worked in CRPS. 3D modeling of James’s brain was correlated with his CT scans, along with how his TBI affected various lobes and cognition. Lastly, James’s spinal cord simulator implantations were animated to capture how invasive these surgeries were.
On numerous occasions prior to trial, the defense requested for Louis to mediate the case. However, Louis would not agree to mediate unless the defense put $20,000,000 on the table as a sign that they were serious about trying to resolve the matter. For months, the defense refused, first offering $5,000,000 and then offering $15,000,000. Louis rebuffed them until they finally agreed to put $20,000,000 on the table. The two sides entered mediation and Louis made clear that liability discussions were a non-starter. When the defense obtained Louis' mediation submission, which included extensive medical animations and illustrations done in partnership with DK Global, they ultimately paid $40,000,000 — a record-breaking settlement for a CRPS case. When James heard the outcome, the final number blew his mind. He was overcome with relief as the amount was life-changing not only for him, but for his wife and children.
Trial lawyer Louis Anthony Cairo is a partner at GWC Injury Lawyers, one of the premier Chicago law firms in the state of Illinois. His firm handles catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases with a concentration in construction negligence, trucking accidents, and product liability cases. He has been responsible for dozens of seven-figure outcomes for his clients. He has also been recognized as a Leading Lawyer (2015, 2016, and 2025) and an Emerging Lawyer (2018-2024) by Leading Lawyers Magazine.
