Name: Donald A. Shapiro
Item: Donald A. Shapiro
Author: don

Bio

With nearly 40 years of legal experience, Donald A. Shapiro has provided valuable legal services to individuals throughout Illinois and beyond. He assists clients with a variety of cases in which innocent people are harmed due to the negligent actions of other individuals or businesses, such as personal injury claims, medical malpractice claims and wrongful death lawsuits. A versatile and seasoned litigator, Mr. Shapiro has handled car accident claims, claims regarding surgical malpractice, police misconduct cases, product liability cases, birth injuries, workplace accidents and brain injuries.

Mr. Shapiro obtained his law degree from University of Chicago Law School in 1974. During his time in law school, he worked for the firm of Aaron, Aaron, Schimberg & Hess, which hired him as a full-time litigator after he received his J.D. After four years, he decided to shift from working on commercial business cases to helping individuals directly, and he opened his own law practice in 1978.

Throughout his career, he has demonstrated supreme skill and expertise, recovering several historical judgments for his clients. One of the first large cases that he won was a legal malpractice action against a lawyer who mishandled a woman's wrongful death case. Don obtained what was then the largest verdict in state history for a legal malpractice case. In 1990 he won a $24.7 million verdict on behalf of a former Milwaukee Brewer for a medical malpractice case in which the athlete's wife was seriously brain damaged after a doctor wrongfully prescribed diet pills for her. This was the largest recovery for a medical malpractice case in Wisconsin history. In 2004, he obtained a $9.6 million verdict for the family of former Northwestern football star Bobby Russ who was wrongfully shot and killed by a Chicago police officer who had pulled him over for an improper lane change. Another notable recovery occurred in 2006, when Mr. Shapiro received the highest medical malpractice verdict for Kane County, Illinois - nearly $25 million for a woman who sustained severe brain damage when a nurse improperly removed a central venous catheter from her. In 2009, Shapiro won another record setting verdict when he represented the family of a 26 year old Mexican immigrant who was killed in an industrial accident at the Archer Daniels Midland plant in Decatur. Because Macon County is conservative and since the decedent was single and had no children the defense only offered $500,000 to settle. The verdict for $6.7 million was affirmed in 2011 by the Illinois Appellate Court. More recently, Mr. Shapiro obtained a $3.5 million dollar verdict on behalf of the family of a 19 year old who was wrongfully shot and killed by a Chicago police officer. Although the verdict was overturned by the trial judge on technical grounds, Mr. Shapiro kept fighting for his clients and on February 20, 2018 the Illinois Appellate Court unanimously reversed the trial judge and reinstituted the jury's verdict. These are just a few examples - the list of million and multi- million verdicts and settlements is extensive.

Mr. Shapiro is committed to providing the highest quality of legal services to injury victims. He continues to work diligently to represent all of his clients.

Donald A. Shapiro

Find Featured Recipients

Attorney Acceptance Form

Attorney Login

Donald A. Shapiro

Login

Sign up for America's Top 100 High Stakes Litigators