Shawn combines a keen awareness of the law and a calculating approach to litigation with a compassionate appreciation for his clients. As a Chicago personal injury lawyer working in an aggressive and resourceful manner, Shawn has obtained many multi-million dollar verdicts and settlements on behalf of his clients. His work at Corboy & Demetrio encompasses diverse areas of the law, including transportation negligence, trucking and automobile collisions, product liability, premises liability, construction negligence and medical negligence.
The grandson of the late Illinois Appellate Court Justice George Kasserman, Shawn developed, at an early age, a respect for the law and the protection it can bring to the vulnerable. In 1987 Shawn left his job as a construction worker and enrolled in DePaul University College of Law. While attending school, Shawn was hired at the Chicago personal injury and medical malpractice law firm of Corboy & Demetrio to work as a law clerk for Philip Corboy and Tom Demetrio. Upon graduation, Shawn was hired as an attorney at the law firm, and less than four years later, obtained his first million-dollar verdict.
Shawn’s success as a personal injury and medical malpractice attorney includes a record-setting jury verdict of $6 million for a family whose mother died from an anesthesiologist’s negligence. He obtained an $8.5 million settlement for the family of an assistant fire chief killed when a fire erupted at a Neiman Marcus store, a $5.7 million settlement for a volunteer emergency worker pinned between two vehicles and won a jury verdict of $4.4 million on behalf of a motorcyclist who was waved into the path of an uninsured driver by a Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) bus driver. In another case involving the CTA, Shawn represented a pedestrian who was struck by a bus as he crossed a street mid block. After almost three weeks of trial, the CTA paid $4.4 million dollars to settle the case.
In a premises liability case, White Castle Restaurant paid Shawn’s client $4 million for injuries sustained during an armed robbery/car jacking attempt in the restaurant’s drive-through. Prior to the trial, defendants had made no settlement offer. Following ten days of trial and closing arguments, the defendants paid $4 million to avoid the jury’s verdict.
Two significant product liability cases resulted in record settlements for Shawn’s clients. In separate but similar incidents, two small children were killed when the portable cribs they were in collapsed. The manufacturers of the popular baby shower gifts had settled similar cases earlier but insisted that the settlements be confidential. Both cases settled only after the defendants gave up their demands for confidentiality in order to avoid jury trials. Playskool/Hasbro paid $3 million dollars to the family of an eighteen month-old boy, and Evenflo, Inc. paid $2.6 million to the family of an eight-month old boy.
In a construction liability case, Shawn obtained a settlement of $3 million for a back hoe operator who drove his machine too closely to a twenty foot ditch that had filled with water. The general contractor paid the settlement after it was established that they failed to adequately shore up the earth around the trench.
His success as a Chicago personal injury trial attorney has gained him recognition. Shawn was named one of the top 100 Super Lawyers in Illinois, the youngest of only 17 plaintiff’s personal injury attorneys on the 2009 list. He has been recognized as a Leading Lawyers, a designation given to only the top 5% of all Illinois lawyers by the Leading Lawyers Network, and has achieved the highest rating in the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory. In 2004, he was named to the Law Bulletin Publishing Company’s list of “40 Illinois Attorneys Under Forty to Watch,” based on his career achievements, his quick rise in the field of personal injury law and his contributions to the community and the legal profession.
He is a frequent lecturer and moderator at continuing legal education seminars and is a contributing author for several legal publications.
100% of Practice Devoted to Litigation
