• In 2018, Mr. Hughes secured a $1 million dollar settlement in a Franklin County, Illinois low impact low speed car crash case aggressively defended by the insurance company up to the trial date. In the same year 2018 Mr. Hughes obtained a $350,000.00 settlement in a car crash case where there was literally no physical damage to the vehicle in which the client was a passenger. Through the use of experts in both low speed low impact cases, Mr. Hughes was able to secure favorable settlements for his clients.
• In 2018, when Allstate Insurance Company would not fairly settle with one of his car crash clients, Mr. Hughes took Allstate to trial in rural Perry County, Illinois and won a verdict of almost $150,000.00 in a case where Allstate only had $100,000.00 in insurance coverage for the defendant. Allstate ended up paying the full verdict even though the verdict exceeded its coverage. The verdict, though small in sum, was one of the larger verdicts in Perry County in years.
• “Academically, Mr. Hughes has been published over the years and lectured in his field as a trial lawyer. For example, in the summer 2018 issue of Trial Journal (Illinois Trial Lawyers magazine) Mr. Hughes wrote in an article entitled: “Admissibility of Future Medical Expenses.” In October 2018 Mr. Hughes gave a video-taped lecture for the Illinois State Bar Association about using technology in the court room trial setting which was the foundation for an article published in the Illinois Bar Journal in January 2019 entitled: “Gear Up: Tips from a Personal Injury Attorney Who Wheels his Own Trial Presentation Technology into Court.”
• In October 2010 Mr. Hughes tried a case in Jefferson County Circuit Court before Judge David Overstreet. The jury trial resulted in a verdict of $581,000.00 for a woman who was crushed by a barn door on a farm.
• Mr. Hughes was admitted pro hac vice in Federal Court in Evansville, Indiana to handle a multiple death and injury truck collision case where a semi tractor trailer truck ran a family van off the roadway causing it to overturn and cross the median only to be hit by another semi in the opposite direction. This case was hotly litigated and ended up being settled during mediation when the Federal Magistrate Judge forced the adverse insurance company and the defendant-trucking company to disclose its financial assets before the insurance company paid $1 million dollars into court to resolve the case. In 26 years of trying cases Mr. Hughes has never experienced a Federal Magistrate order a trucking company to produce ‘corporate’ financial statements before a jury trial. But by him doing so our Firm was able to determine that the trucking company was nearly bankrupt and all we could obtain for our clients was the insurance monies.