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Romanucci & Blandin: The Card-Table Firm Whose Civil-Rights Practice Began With a Case the City Refused to Settle

Antonio Romanucci describes the 1998 start of the firm as a small office with a card table and a plastic bag for the garbage. Three years in, a man named Vernon Hudson was struck by a Chicago police car on the Eisenhower Expressway and paralyzed. The City of Chicago offered nothing to settle. Romanucci and Stephan Blandin tried the case and, in March 2005, won $17,682,374.05; the Illinois Appellate Court affirmed the judgment in December 2007. Romanucci has since called it a case “they said we could never win.” What is worth noticing is what it became: not a one-off, but the entry point for a police-misconduct and civil-rights practice that now sits alongside the firm’s personal injury work and is the reason national headlines carry its name.

At a Glance

FIRM	Romanucci & Blandin, LLC
FOUNDED	1998, by Antonio M. Romanucci and Stephan D. Blandin
OFFICES	321 North Clark Street, Suite 900, Chicago, IL 60654 (River North), plus a DuPage County office in Bloomingdale
PRACTICE	Plaintiff-side: civil rights and police misconduct, medical malpractice, birth injury, mass torts, product liability, sexual abuse, workplace injury, wrongful death
SIZE	22 attorneys plus a retired-judge mediator; 10 partners
NOTE ON THE CO-FOUNDER	Stephan D. Blandin is now Of Counsel rather than an active partner
AGGREGATE CLAIM	“More than $1 billion” in verdicts and settlements (per the firm, announced January 2024; no methodology disclosed)
NETWORK CLAIM	The firm’s “50 attorney network” refers to referral and co-counsel relationships, not its own headcount

Origin and Background

Romanucci took his B.A. in psychology from Wisconsin–Madison in 1982 and his J.D. from what is now UIC Law in 1985, and was admitted to the Illinois bar that year. His route in was a recommendation from Cook County Chief Judge Harry Comerford, a patron of the Romanucci family’s restaurant, which led to three years at the Cook County Public Defender’s office from 1984 to 1987 handling Fourth Amendment cases — a detail that reads differently once the firm’s later constitutional practice is visible. He and Blandin founded the firm in 1998. A Better Business Bureau record dating the business to January 1999 conflicts by a few months with the firm’s own date; Awesome Attorneys uses 1998.

What Makes the Firm Structurally Different

The civil-rights practice was not bought or hired in; it was grown out of an ordinary plaintiff’s case against the City that the City would not settle, and it now has its own partner-level hiring track. The firm’s stated mechanism for that work is what it calls impact litigation — converting case findings into legislative change, with its attorneys testifying to legislatures directly. That part is partly checkable: Romanucci testified before a U.S. House Judiciary subcommittee in April 2026 and submitted a statement to a Senate forum on federal-officer accountability in February 2026, and both Illinois statutes the firm associates itself with are real, a 2025 law requiring stricter background review in police hiring and a December 2025 act creating a state-law civil action for constitutional violations during immigration enforcement. The limit of the claim is equally checkable: independent coverage of both laws credits the sponsoring legislators and does not name the firm, so its causal role in either statute is firm-reported rather than established. The firm also cites the police-hiring law by a bill number that does not match the act that passed.

Practice Areas

Civil rights and police misconduct. Medical malpractice. Birth injuries. Nursing home abuse. Sexual abuse and hazing. Mass torts and class actions. Environmental and toxic torts. Premises liability. Product liability. Transportation and motor vehicle collisions. Workplace injury. Wrongful death. Aviation.

Track Record

Matter	Result	Role and verification
Hudson v. City of Chicago — paralysis after being struck by a police vehicle	$17,682,374.05 verdict, March 2005; affirmed December 2007	Firm as lead; verified in the appellate opinion
George Floyd — claims against the City of Minneapolis	$27 million settlement, approved March 12, 2021	Co-counsel with Ben Crump, who led; independently reported
Jean v. Guyger — wrongful death of Botham Jean	$98.65 million federal jury verdict, N.D. Texas, November 20, 2024	Firm attorney as lead trial counsel, with co-counsel; verdict against the former officer individually — see note below
Sonya Massey — claims against Sangamon County	$10 million settlement, February 2025	Co-counsel with Ben Crump; independently reported
Carreon v. City of Chicago — police pursuit	$21.3 million verdict, April 2019; settled post-verdict for $19.25 million	Firm as lead; the recovery figure is the lower one
Chicago red light and speed camera class action	$38.75 million settlement, 2017	Co-class counsel with another firm; independently reported
Chemtool plant fire, Rockton, Illinois	$94.5 million class settlement, final approval September 2024	Firm served on the plaintiffs’ executive committee, not as co-lead
Route 91 Harvest festival shooting, Las Vegas	Global settlement of $735–800 million; $16.83 million recovered for this firm’s own 76 clients	Firm on the litigation steering committee; the global figure was led by other counsel
LaPorta v. City of Chicago	$44.7 million verdict, 2017 — reversed by the Seventh Circuit in February 2021, with instructions to enter judgment for the City	Firm as lead; verified in the appellate opinion

Three of these entries need their qualifiers read, not skipped. The $44.7 million LaPorta verdict appears on the firm’s results page without any indication that it was vacated and judgment entered for the City; it produced no recovery. The $98.65 million Botham Jean verdict was entered against a former officer individually after the City of Dallas was dismissed before verdict, and as of 2026 it remains substantially uncollected, with the family in separate litigation seeking to make the city indemnify. And in the highest-profile matters — Floyd, Massey, and the pending Tyre Nichols case — this firm is co-counsel with Ben Crump’s firm rather than lead, which national coverage rarely makes clear. Awesome Attorneys did not independently verify the firm’s larger self-reported figures, including a $150 million mass tort and a $50 million workplace wrongful-death mediation. Past results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case.

Client Voice

Independent, attributed client review data on this firm is genuinely thin, and the little that exists is mixed. Lawyers.com shows a client rating of 1.8 out of 5 from two reviews, one of which is a detailed 2013 complaint from a prospective client who says the firm took a meeting about a claim against a physical therapist and then dropped the case without explanation; the firm posted a rebuttal stating it met the client four times, reviewed the records, and declined the matter based on the client’s recovery. Awesome Attorneys reports both halves because a declined case is a normal and defensible outcome, and because a profile that quoted only the firm’s side of a published dispute would not be worth reading. The Better Business Bureau file shows an A+ rating with zero reviews and zero complaints. Romanucci’s Avvo profile carries no client reviews. The single testimonial on the firm’s own client page is from Yvonne Ambrose, the mother of a sixteen-year-old murdered after being trafficked online, whose case the firm brought: “Gina and the team have been like family to me. They travel and support me in spreading awareness of the dangers of sex trafficking.” Google and Yelp ratings could not be retrieved, and the firm’s Yelp presence is split across three listings, which fragments any rating.

Beyond the Courtroom

Antonio Romanucci gave $100,000 to the John Marshall Law School’s pro bono clinic in 2016, announced publicly by the school. He was president of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association in 2019–20, chaired the Illinois Supreme Court Rules Committee in 2020 after eight years as a member, chaired the American Association for Justice’s Police Misconduct Litigation Group from 2014 to 2018, and sits on that association’s executive committee. Stephan Blandin was appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court to the ARDC Hearing Board, which recommends attorney discipline, serving six consecutive years through February 2018 — an unusual credential for a plaintiff’s lawyer and one that cuts against the grain of the firm’s adversarial public profile. Partner Frank A. Sommario completed a two-year presidency of the National Italian American Bar Association. The firm ran a 2020 relief program for restaurant and food-service workers and employs a community engagement manager.

Recognition

Illinois Rule of Professional Conduct 7.4(b) provides that the Supreme Court of Illinois does not recognize certifications of specialties in the practice of law, and 7.4(c) restricts the words “certified,” “specialist” and “expert.” Awesome Attorneys does not use specialist language for Illinois firms.

Bar-association and peer recognition with no purchase path: the American Association for Justice’s Leonard Weinglass in Defense of Civil Liberties Award in 2021, shared with the George Floyd legal team, plus its Joe Tonahill and Howard Twiggs awards; the Illinois State Bar Association’s Elmer Gertz Human Rights Award; a Bohemian Lawyers’ Association Liberty Award; and the bar offices listed above. Hybrid: Best Lawyers and Best Law Firms, peer-balloted but commercially licensed, with a 2026 National Tier 1 ranking in mass tort and class actions for plaintiffs and five Chicago Tier 1 rankings; Martindale-Hubbell’s AV Preeminent peer rating. Commercial or fee-based, kept separate: Super Lawyers, which lists sixteen firm attorneys; the Leading Lawyers Network; and The National Trial Lawyers, a dues-based organization. Avvo’s 10.0 is algorithmic. Two recognitions the firm publishes — a “No. 1 Verdict in Texas” for 2024 and an “Aviation Law Firm of the Year in Illinois” for 2013 — name no issuing body that Awesome Attorneys could identify, and are noted here rather than counted.

Illinois Legal Backdrop

An Illinois action for damages for personal injury must generally be commenced within two years after the cause of action accrued, under 735 ILCS 5/13-202. Under 735 ILCS 5/2-1116, a plaintiff is barred from recovering if the trier of fact finds the plaintiff’s contributory fault is more than 50 percent, and damages otherwise reduce in proportion to that fault. For an injured minor, 735 ILCS 5/13-211 allows two years after the person turns 18. Civil-rights claims against police officers and municipalities are a separate matter: they are typically brought in federal court under federal statute, are governed by federal doctrine on when an officer’s conduct is attributable to a public employer, and can carry different filing deadlines and notice requirements than an ordinary negligence claim. The Seventh Circuit’s reversal in the LaPorta case is a concrete illustration — the court held that the officer had acted as a private citizen, which defeated the constitutional claim outright after a jury had already awarded $44.7 million. None of this is legal advice, and the gap between a large verdict and a collectible judgment is precisely the kind of thing to ask a licensed Illinois lawyer about directly.

Awesome Attorneys Assessment

This is the Chicago plaintiff’s firm most willing to take constitutional cases that pay nothing if they lose, and the record shows it has both won them and lost them at the highest level. That willingness is the differentiator and it is genuine; it began with a case the City valued at zero. The honest trade-offs are unusually important here. First, the headline numbers do not translate cleanly into client recoveries: the largest verdict on the firm’s Chicago police record was vacated on appeal, its largest civil-rights verdict anywhere is against an individual with no assets and remains largely uncollected, and in several nationally covered matters the firm is co-counsel rather than lead. A prospective client reading the results page will not learn any of that from the page. Second, the firm’s public review record is thin and includes a published complaint from a declined prospective client. Third, the firm and its people have given substantially to Chicago’s mayor while carrying pending cases against the City — roughly 100 contributions totaling over $400,000 since he took office, by one newspaper’s count — and Romanucci’s answer is that those donations reflect his own views on city governance and have never interfered with the firm’s work against the city. Nothing about that is alleged to be unlawful, and it is the kind of thing a client is entitled to know. For a police-misconduct, civil-rights or catastrophic-injury case that needs a firm with genuine constitutional litigation depth and national co-counsel relationships, this is a short-list firm in Chicago. For a client whose priority is a predictable, collectible recovery on a conventional claim, a firm built around the conventional claim may fit better.

Methodology and Sourcing

Researched from the firm’s own site, including its practice, results, professionals, community and legislative-advocacy pages, cross-referenced against independent sources for every major matter: the Illinois Appellate Court opinion in Hudson v. City of Chicago; the Seventh Circuit’s 2021 opinion reversing the LaPorta judgment; CBS News and WTTW reporting on the Minneapolis settlement; KERA, NBC News and CBS Texas reporting on the Botham Jean verdict and its collection posture; Capitol News Illinois and NBC News on the Massey settlement; WTTW and the Cook County Record on the camera class action; and DiCello Levitt’s own announcement confirming the leadership structure of the Chemtool settlement. Romanucci’s biography, bar offices and congressional testimony were verified against the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s published witness biography. Blandin’s ARDC Hearing Board service was verified against contemporaneous reporting. Campaign-contribution figures come from Chicago Sun-Times reporting of March 2025. The Illinois statutes associated with the firm’s advocacy were confirmed as enacted public acts. Illinois limitations, comparative fault and minority-tolling provisions were verified against the Illinois General Assembly’s published text of 735 ILCS 5/13-202, 5/2-1116 and 5/13-211. The ARDC lawyer-search grid returned server errors during this research, so no direct primary-source disciplinary record was retrieved for the firm’s attorneys; no discipline was found in any secondary source, and Awesome Attorneys states that limit rather than reporting a clean record it could not confirm.

Publisher Disclosure and Independence Notice

Awesome Attorneys is an independent legal directory and editorial publication. This profile was not paid for, commissioned, or reviewed by Romanucci & Blandin, LLC prior to publication. Awesome Attorneys may in the future offer sponsored placement products to attorneys and firms, including this one, but sponsorship has no bearing on the editorial content, inclusion, or findings of this profile. Facts in this profile are current only as of the research date and may change.