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The lawyers of Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard P.C. have made protecting the rights of people unjustly injured the focus of their practice since 1982.
Now, they’re sharing a behind-the-scenes look at some of their biggest trials in history on Beating Goliath: A Plaintiff’s Pursuit of Justice.
Join Patrick Salvi II, Managing Partner of the firm’s Chicago office, and host Marcie Mangan as they take a deep dive into how Salvi Law attorneys won these incredible, at times record-breaking, verdicts and found justice for their strong and persevering Chicagoland clients.
Through interviews with victims and key witnesses, archived media coverage, and recounts from Patrick himself, they’ll bring these life-changing cases to life through audio.
Season one trials will include an Iraq War veteran’s fateful encounter with a forklift, a young dancer paralyzed at the nation's third-largest airport, and a 13-year-old who lost his life after being struck by an ambulance.
Tune in to hear how the Salvi team pursued justice and, ultimately, defeated Goliath.
From the Chicagoland law firm of
Salvi, Schostok and Pritchard.
This is beating Goliath.
A plaintiff's pursuit of justice.
Case number three, part one.
Tierney darden versus the city of Chicago.
We had just come back from
a trip from Minneapolis.
My daughter was engaged, and we were
looking at bridesmaid's dresses.
So we were leaving the airport, and we
were going to the last street where
you get to be picked up by people.
I remember going out, and it was, like,
slightly raining, and we were waiting
for my dad to come pick me up.
At the time I was heading there, it
started raining pretty hard, and then.
The storm blew in.
It was very windy, very rainy,
and we were seeking shelter.
I thought, oh, look,
there's a bus shelter.
And we can't go inside because the
rain would come right in with us.
We'll go on the other side because it's
a big, heavy, metal, glass structure.
I think there was hail going on.
I went behind the shelter, and I know we
were laughing about something, and then
next thing I know, I thought I heard a
scream, and I thought it was my sister.
And next thing I know is I'm running,
and I get hit in the head.
I see, like, a white flash, and then
I'm on the ground, and
my legs went completely numb.
Literally, the next thing we know,
this structure is falling on top of us.
And then I looked over to see who was
there, and my youngest daughter was gone.
So I was like, okay.
Somehow she managed to bolt out of there,
and there's tierney on the other
end, and she's crouched down.
She's, like, on her knees, and she's all
crouched down, and the
structure is on top.
But I'm yelling at her to get out, and she
looks at me, and she says,
I can't feel my legs.
I don't think I felt pain.
It was more the tingling and then me
knowing immediately that
something was wrong.
And I assumed it was me being paralyzed.
At one point, they tried to lift up the
shelter, and they kept
telling me to crawl out.
And I told them I couldn't move.
I wasn't able to move at all.
At that moment, I knew
something was horribly wrong.
My little sister got, like, pissed off
because some people were taking pictures.
That's what people do.
Shortly thereafter, there were all these
hands as they were
picking up the structure.
And of course, after they did
that, she still couldn't move.
But we were afraid because I didn't want
the structure to fall down on her again.
So we did pull her out to the
street and again, not moving.
I got out of my vehicle,
saw, stepped into, essentially,
I guess it's the taxicab lane.
And saw the crowd of people around
tyranny and tyranny on the ground.
I knew something bad had happened.
We knew it was severe then.
I mean, because she couldn't
get up, she couldn't move.
She was in a lot of pain, lying there,
very uncomfortable because of the rain.
They put her in the ambulance,
took her to the hospital.
She was there for about a week or so.
It doesn't matter how old your child is.
Your child is gravely injured.
And going to see your child in an
intensive care unit when
there are tubes everywhere, instruments
everywhere, machines
everywhere, noises everywhere.
And you're watching your daughter, who
looks so small on that bed
compared to all of the equipment.
You're always scared because
you're not in charge.
It wasn't until later on, after they had
finished doing preliminary look at her,
that we knew actually how severe it was.
She was paralyzed, wasn't
expected to ever walk again.
I wasn't surprised, but I was also upset
because I had been dancing my whole life.
I love to walk.
I knew I was paralyzed, but
them telling me how severe it was and that
it wasn't gonna,
like I wasn't gonna get better.
Like, it crushed me.
How did something that heavy that should
have been bolted to the
pavement fall on top of us?
There is no reason that
that should happen.
My name is Patrick Ssalvi.
I am the managing partner at
Salvi, Schostok and Pritchard.
I was alerted to the fact that
a serious case had come in.
And I was asked to be part of a team
to meet with tyranny at the hospital, with
her family and be interviewed for possibly
being chosen as the law firm to represent
her in a cause of action against whomever
was responsible for this terrible tragedy.
I just remember Mr.
Salvi coming fairly recent
after the accident and immediately
again because of his calm manner.
It's like, okay, one less thing I have to
worry about because he's
going to take care of that.
I can now just focus on my daughter.
The doctors knew
that this was a severe permanent
spinal cord injury that would
result in permanent paraplegia.
That wasn't a situation where they do an
operation and you hope you get better.
The injury to the cord was so severe
that all they could do was decompress
by a surgical procedure and to prevent any
further swelling and damage and stabilize
the back so that she could
begin rehabilitation.
Terry's early weeks started
off at the lutheran general.
So she was there for about a week or so,
then went to what was then
rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
Ric and is now known as
Shirley Ryan Ability Lab.
Ric was fantastic.
We had to go there where they showed us
how they taught her to do some things,
especially the process of
getting it in and out of a car.
Sometimes I didn't know how to get her to
know on the toilet, into the
shower, those kinds of things.
I'm Tara Devine.
I'm a partner at Salvi,
Schostok, and Pritchard.
I work in Lake CCountyounty as
managing partner of our Joaquin office.
I also was born and raised in Lake
county and currently live there now.
And so immediately when I heard about
this case, I knew where the family lived.
I felt a greater connection.
It was as if it happened to a
neighbor that you grew up next to.
So I was brought in because we knew that
there was going to have to be a lot of
client communication and client contact.
One of the most important things a lawyer
can do is really get to know the plight,
the day to day, the hardest things
in terms of physically,
emotionally, how you feel.
You've got to spend the time
to really know it, and then you're
much better position of presenting it.
I went to go see them at Ric before
she even got released to go back home.
She was just heavily medicated,
kind of in and out of sedation.
At the beginning, I was probably taking,
I don't know, maybe ten to 20
different kinds of medicine.
Most of it was probably opioids.
So my days were kind of
blurred together and hazy.
There were neuropathic pain medications.
There were pain medications.
She was on a number of opioids, and
because of the opioids, that would
throw off her intestinal system.
So she was on medications to help
keep her from her stools, from clogging
her up, from her being
constipated and impacted.
She was on bladder relaxants
or bladder stimulants.
She frequently would get urinary tract
infections, and then that
would require antibiotics.
She was on supplements, antianxiety
medications, medications just to
help her work through the day.
I would say she was on at one time, she'd
be on up to 2025 prescription medications.
There were times when
I would take the medicine and
I would be still in so much pain that I
would be crying for more, because I
thought that that was the
only way to help suppress it.
And instead, it just made me more groggy,
and I was falling asleep on people, and
I was literally staying in bed 24/7.
Once she's discharged from rehab.
There were some wonderful volunteers that
went to work on the house that her dad
lived in, that David lived in, so
that they could get it prepared.
But that took, as you can
imagine, weeks, if not months.
And so she lived for months, weeks upon
weeks, at a hotel in Vernon Hills with
her mom and her dad constantly there.
And her mom would spend the
night, and they would stay there.
And this hotel room was packed
with medical supplies and diapers.
This was not a Four Seasons.
Before the accident, I mean, she
was older, she was out of the house.
She was independent afterwards.
I'm living with my daughter for six
months in a tiny little hotel room.
We are sleeping in the same bed, and
I am taking care of bodily functions.
I would go visit with clothes in there and
medical supplies and food
from the night before.
You go from normal,
where you're happy go lucky, you're
dancing, you have your whole
wonderful life ahead of you.
You can just get up and go and do
whatever you want, whenever you want.
You don't even give a second thought to.
You just get up and go and enjoy life
as a young, energetic, happy young lady.
Know, every day is.
You have an exhaustive bowel program.
You're catheterized to urinate multiple
times during the course of the day.
Every day is just a struggle.
I remember Trudy telling me one morning,
and Trudy looked like she had a rough
night, and she know, and I kind of like
it looks like you've had a rough night.
Is everything okay?
What can you know?
And she said, do you know how hard it is
to lay next to your daughter and listen
to her cry herself to sleep at night?
And it just resonated with me.
Our plaintiff in the case was tyranny.
But you almost wish that you could get
something for what her
parents went through.
From the moment they woke up to the
morning, the moment when they went to bed,
their lives were turned upside down, too.
Once she got a little bit more stabilized
a few weeks down the road, it was
going to work, going to see tyranny,
checking on the family animals, making
sure they were okay, sleeping, and
then doing the whole same thing again.
This was no fairy tale or recovery.
It was a really hard road for all of them.
And to say, like, an adjustment
is not the right word to use.
What's the hashtag now?
Like, girl dad or whatever.
That's what David was.
He was a girl dad for the mom, Trudy.
Both of them would have done anything
for any one of their daughters.
They showed that time and time again by
showing up every single day and
making sure that she was never alone.
Tierney kind of wears her
heart on her sleeve sometimes.
I think she was very depressed.
I didn't really see
much happiness in my life.
It was slow moving, a blur.
I was a sad person.
I didn't really care to do anything.
I didn't care to work out.
I didn't care to take care of myself.
I didn't care to talk to people.
What helped me fill the
void the most was my family.
They have been there since the
beginning, haven't left my side once.
There is not really much we can do for
attorney other than to be there for her.
There will always be a part of me that
was taken away and I can't get back.
Dance was like my life.
I danced a lot before the accident.
From my first recital
on, I was, like, hooked.
How sad it was to see a young lady whose
main joy in life was dancing
and wanted to operate a dance studio.
As a profession,
of course, that was taken from her
and then was afflicted with
this terrible pain syndrome.
I do believe that had this happen to
someone else,
innately in their nature, was not an
optimistic, positive, love the
world type of girl or young adult.
I could easily see other
people throwing in the towel.
That wasn't an option for her, and
I knew it wasn't an option for her.
Not because she physically or
mentally wouldn't have wanted to.
It was because the love that she had for
those around her, she could
never do that to her family.
She would never do that to her parents,
to her sisters, to her nieces and nephews.
She would not do that.
It wasn't for several weeks, if not
months, before I actually got like a small
window into the real tyranny and how this
was really impacting her and being able to
have a conversation with the daughter
that her mom and dad knew her to be.
She was a beautiful, despite
everything that she was going through.
She just naturally has a light
shining from within her tyranny.
Despite everything that she went through,
I think her entire life, she was just
someone who had a bright,
shining light inside of her.
And I truly believe that it was her innate
nature and positivity
that got her through.
It was clear that
the accident happened as a result of a
failure to maintain
and repair the shelter.
We knew the city owned
and operated the airport.
We weren't certain whether any third party
was involved, but we certainly knew that
the city ultimately was responsible
for the condition of the shelters.
When you have a case like this
and there's no litigation.
It's not like a malpractice case where you
can have the client sign
authorizations and get medical records.
You can't get the records from the city of
Chicago or the airport
unless you have a lawsuit.
There was a meritorious basis to sue the
city of Chicago, at the very
least, and that's what we did.
This was something that was so avoidable,
proper maintenance of those shelters,
and this wouldn't have happened.
I'm pissed.
I'm upset that something that could have
been fixed kind of ruined part of my life.
My job was to make assignments to the
various members of the trial team
in terms of who would do what.
My name is Eirene Nakamura Salvi, and I'm
an associate attorney at
Salvi, Schostok and Pritchard.
The first time I met Tierney, I went to
her house in Bernon Hills
with Pat senior and Tara.
She was really, really suffering.
I mean, it was really hard for her
to even get out of bed to talk to us.
There's just something about tyranny
that you can't help but like.
Tierney is just about a year younger than
me, and we kind of listened to this
similar music, and we had
some similar interests.
To see her and get to know her as somebody
who's more of my peer was an interesting
experience, and it was
certainly a motivating factor.
Just knowing that to have all of that
taken away from you in an
instant, it's unimaginable.
I'm Patrick Salvi, Jr.
And I'm the managing partner of the
Chicago office at Salvi,
Schostok, and Pritchard.
My role on the trial team was to work with
the rest of the team members in our
strategy leading into the trial.
I met Tierney about
two years after she was injured.
I went to her home.
I was really in awe of her ability to
converse with us, have a smile on her face
through the adversity she was facing, and
to really be able to focus
on the task at hand.
Tierney was incredibly strong, and I
learned that really, within
moments of meeting her.
We were really round tabling, kind of what
the next steps would be and getting all of
the information about Tierney's continuing
treatment because she had so many
different doctors and all of these issues
that were going on, and really just kind
of gearing up to do all the research and
get her ducks, all her ducks in a row, and
to have the city
eventually admit liability.
We deposed virtually every person
that could have anything whatsoever to do
with that part of the terminal, the bus
shelters, the maintaining
of the bus shelters.
We took dozens and dozens of depositions
of employees of the city of Chicago,
worked at the airport, and basically
discovered that no one was responsible for
checking these bus shelters.
Everyone else thought some other
department or person would do it.
There clearly was no routine designated
individual to do inspections and
maintenance on these shelters.
In essence, I think their plan was when
something breaks or falls,
then you take care of it.
At the end of the day, the city was left
with the decision of, hey, we throw up our
hands and we are responsible,
we accept liability.
But they didn't do it until we
brought them to their knees.
The city of Chicago didn't admit
negligence until maybe
six months before trial.
It was a lot of work that went into this.
They fought really hard against admission
of negligence, obviously, because they
knew that this was a significant case with
significant injuries and
exposure for the city.
It was actually in the defendant's
best interest to admit liability.
People, jurors and laypeople think,
well, you want people to admit liability.
That makes for an easier trial, and then
you don't have to worry about
a not guilty yes and no.
The disadvantage to the defendant's
admitted liability, though, is then you
don't get to go into
if it was egregious conduct, or even like
above and beyond which, in this case, we
had to prove conscious disregard for the
safety of others because it was
against the city of Chicago.
We had our goals in mindset as to what the
case was worth, and we just didn't really
think that the city would come
close enough for it to take care of
tyranny or to fully compensate her
for what they took away from her.
I didn't really think the case was going
to settle because
I just think we were on different
wavelengths in terms of the value of the
case, what the appropriate
compensation should be.
Their best settlement offer was in the $30
to $35 million range
and never really indicated a
willingness to go much above that.
It became pretty evident that the two
sides had just very different value
propositions as to what an
injury like this was worth.
I thought that their initial offers were
low, especially once our
quality of life report came out.
The expert had said, attorney will
need this for the rest of her life.
It wasn't enough.
We're telling them, turn this away because
we feel that we're going to be able to get
more from a jury and that the case
is worth more than they're offering.
The city was insured
with a $500 million dollar liability
policy, so it wasn't a situation
where, like in a police shooting.
They have to go to
the city council and get approval and say,
we'd like you to authorize a
payment of x amount of dollars.
This was insurance money, so it was
another reason why we really felt
it was a very good case to try.
There really isn't an amount of money that
any human being would accept
to have tyranny's existence.
The compensatory damages in a case
like this ought to be extraordinary.
The team was talking about potentially
asking for as much as
$100 million from a jury.
I asked the question, why
wouldn't we ask for $200 million?
In our next episode, Tierney'Beatings
attorneys prepare for trial and make
their case against the city of Chicago.
But will their arguments be enough to
convince a jury to award her
a record breaking verdict?
Listen in to see if the trial team makes
the right decision in turning down a
multi million dollar settlement offer.
When you turn down a settlement, you do
not know until you get a verdict
if you made the right decision.
Special thanks to Tierney Darden
for allowing us to share her story.
You can find more episodes of beating
Goliath on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
To learn more about this case
in our firm, head to www.
salvilaw.
com podcast.