CHICAGO, IL—A Will County, Illinois, jury returned verdicts totaling $3,611,480 for two McCreadyLaw Injury Attorneys clients injured in a 2020 motor vehicle crash in Joliet. State Farm Insurance had only offered a combined $50,000 before trial, according to the firm.

The jury awarded $925,523 to one client and $2,685,957 to the other. McCreadyLaw expects the combined recovery to reach approximately $4.6 million after prejudgment interest.

The case involved a January 2020 low-speed rear-end collision in which the plaintiffs were occupants of a vehicle struck from behind. Although the impact caused little to no visible damage to the rear of the vehicle, both plaintiffs later underwent surgery for injuries they attributed to the crash. One plaintiff reported lower back pain, while the other reported shoulder pain following the accident.

At trial, the defense disputed the extent to which the low-speed impact could have caused the claimed injuries, relying in part on the limited visible damage to the vehicle. The jury ultimately found in favor of the plaintiffs and awarded damages substantially exceeding the insurer’s pretrial offers.

The verdicts exceeded State Farm’s combined final offers by more than $3.55 million. The insurer’s last offers were $5,000 for one claim and $45,000 for the other, according to McCreadyLaw.

Jess Jordan tried the case with John D. Risvold, a partner at Collins Law Group, P.C. The lawsuit, Stephanie Sankey and Emanuel Bradley v. Juliana Arbuthnot, as special representative of Eugene Arbuthnot, deceased, was filed in the Circuit Court of the 12th Judicial Circuit, Will County, Illinois, as Case No. 2022 LA 000435.