Welcome to the Hall of Fame. Although this one isn’t for sluggers, linebackers or point guards.
Instead, the Connecticut Law Tribune is honoring some of the highest dollar – and highest profile – personal injury cases of the past three years.
The selection process was uncomplicated. We broke personal injury law into a number of sub-categories – ranging from general negligence to medical malpractice to intentional tort – and looked for the biggest verdicts or settlements since 2011. The top two cases in each category were honored.
Further, to put some faces behind the cases, we are honoring two litigators: Sean McElligott of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder in Bridgeport, will receive our Rising Trial Lawyer Award, and Matthew Shafner, of Suisman Shapiro in New London, is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award.
As always, there are caveats: In sticking with a policy that we use for our annual Personal Injury Yearbook, we generally judged the verdicts using the dollar amount returned by the judges or juries. However, in footnotes at the end of each case description, we noted the amount of money that was added to or subtracted from the award by post-trial motions, interest, legal fees and other factors.
We hope you enjoy reading about these cases, which often broke new legal ground as well as returning high damage awards. As with any Hall of Fame, we’re sure there will be arguments over what we included and what we excluded.
As always, feel free to contact us with your views. Even better, when you or your firm wins a significant victory, give us a shout at [email protected] so we can include it in regular issues of the Connecticut Law Tribune as well as in special publications like this one.
