Nolan Law Group: The Chicago Firm That Sues the FAA for the Records

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At a Glance

Firm	Nolan Law Group (legal entity: Donald J. Nolan, Ltd.)
Founded	Founding year unverified — Donald J. Nolan was admitted November 1, 1977; the Nolan Law Group entity is recorded by the BBB from 1999 (see Section I)
Office	20 N. Clark Street, 30th Floor, Chicago, IL 60602 — single office, no satellites
Focus	Aviation disaster; medical negligence including birth injury; traumatic brain injury; carbon monoxide poisoning; construction, premises and vehicle injury; wrongful death
Side of the docket	Plaintiff only — 107 federal dockets reviewed, zero defense appearances
Size	Eight attorneys
Signature result	$165,000,000 settlement, Air Philippines Flight 541 (Layug), Cook County, 2008 — Donald Nolan’s lead-counsel role confirmed by independent press
Peer standing	Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent (Nolan); ATLA Aviation Law Section chair, 2004; ITLA Secretary, 1996–97; Thomas P. Routh on the ITLA Board of Managers
Fee model	Contingency (per the firm)
Disciplinary record	No public discipline on file with the Illinois ARDC for any of the eight attorneys; none in New York for Nolan

I. A FOIA Suit Against the Federal Aviation Administration

In 2024 a case was filed in the Northern District of Illinois captioned Donald J. Nolan, Ltd. v. Federal Aviation Administration. A law firm was suing the aviation regulator under the Freedom of Information Act to get crash records out of it.

That single docket line settles a question that firm marketing usually cannot. Aviation practices are easy to claim and hard to place — a firm that “handles aviation matters” might be defending the airline. We pulled 107 federal dockets naming this firm and 69 naming Donald Nolan personally, spanning 1999 to 2026, and every aviation matter runs the same direction: Satijo v. The Boeing Company and five companion Lion Air cases; In re: Air Crash Into the Java Sea on January 9, 2021; In re: Air Crash at Belle Harbor; In re: Air Crash at Taipei; In re: Nantucket Air Crash; Akintayo v. United Airlines; Trundell v. American Airlines. Carriers and manufacturers on one side, this firm on the other, for twenty-seven years. Not one defense appearance in any year.

The firm itself does not tell an origin story. Its About page offers a category statement — “Helping Injured People And Their Loved Ones For Over 40 Years” — with no founding year, no founding case, no narrative. So the specifics have to come from the record: Donald J. Nolan took his B.A. from Elmhurst College with honors in 1974 and his J.D. from DePaul in 1977, was admitted to the Illinois bar on November 1, 1977, and today sits on the advisory board of the DePaul Aviation Institute — the specialty routed back through his own law school. He chaired the Association of Trial Lawyers of America’s Railroad Section from 1988 to 1999 before chairing its Aviation Law Section in 2004, which is the actual sequence by which a railroad lawyer became an aviation lawyer.

We could not verify the firm’s founding year and do not state one. The BBB records a business start of January 1, 1999, which is the Nolan Law Group trade name rather than the practice; the underlying corporation, Donald J. Nolan, Ltd., is still the registered firm name on two attorneys’ ARDC records and is the caption the firm litigates under. The Illinois Secretary of State’s entity search was inaccessible to us.

II. The Mechanism: A Boutique That Is Small Because Air Disasters Are Rare

Eight lawyers is not a small version of a big firm. It is the correct size for a practice whose caseload arrives in the form of catastrophes.

The firm’s own aviation page lists roughly 120 crashes it has worked between 1989 and 2021 — American Airlines 587, TWA 800, United 232, United 585, Singapore 006, Swissair 111, USAir 427, American Eagle 4184, MH17, Lion Air 610, EgyptAir 990. Notably, the page assigns the firm no role in any of them. It is a list of matters worked, not a results claim, and we think that restraint is deliberate.

The other structural feature is a nurse. Virginia Lazzara, RN, BSN, CRRN, CBIS, is on staff as a brain-injury consultant — correctly labeled as a non-attorney, alongside Leandra Montero, Director of Administration since November 2000. A firm whose cases are traumatic brain injury, catastrophic burn and crash-survivor medicine keeping clinical capability in-house is a mechanism, not a slogan, and it connects to the non-aviation half of the docket, which is substantial: the verdicts page is actually dominated by medical negligence and construction cases — Beasley v. Presence Hospitals ($14.75M), Vergara ($12M), Galindo v. Clayco Construction ($6.5M), Mikalauskas v. Advocate ($6.25M), Vasquez v. Walsh Construction ($6.25M).

III. Practice Areas

• Aviation and air disaster litigation
• Medical negligence, including birth injury, anesthesia, nursing and medication errors
• Traumatic brain injury
• Carbon monoxide poisoning
• Construction and premises injury
• Motor vehicle collisions
• Wrongful death

IV. Track Record

Past results do not guarantee or predict the outcome of any future case. Each figure below is identified by its source, and where the firm’s own presentation of a figure is incomplete, we say so.

$165,000,000	Air Philippines Flight 541 — the April 19, 2000 crash on Samal Island that killed 131, the deadliest in Philippine history. 110 individually-filed wrongful-death suits in the Circuit Court of Cook County against AAR Aircraft & Engine Group and Fleet Business Credit, settled 2008. Nolan’s lead-counsel role is independently corroborated — Gulf News identifies “Donald Nolan, lead counsel of the case,” and Philstar reports the families’ team was led by his Chicago firm. Our correction: Gerald C. Sterns of Oakland also represented families and is not named by the firm.
$115,750,000 verdict — of which this firm’s clients recovered $68,500,000	National Airlines Flight 102, the Bagram cargo crash. Cook County Circuit Court, Judge Lorna E. Propes, verdict June 30, 2017, consolidated Nos. 13 L 9650, 13 L 9651, 14 L 8696. See the correction immediately below — this is the most significant accuracy problem we found.
$14,750,000	Beasley v. Presence Hospitals, medical negligence. Firm-sourced.
$12,000,000 / $6,500,000 / $6,250,000	Vergara; Galindo v. Clayco Construction; Mikalauskas v. Advocate and Vasquez v. Walsh Construction. Firm-sourced.

V. The Correction This Profile Is Obliged to Make

The firm advertises the Bagram verdict as $115.75 million, on its homepage and its verdicts page, without qualification. The verdict is real and was reported by PRNewswire, the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin and trade press. But it breaks down across three flight-crew estates:

Capt. Brad Hasler	$47,250,000 — reduced from $54,000,000 for contributory negligence — represented by Katzman, Lampert & McClune
F/O Jamie Brokaw	$43,000,000 — Nolan Law Group
Capt. Jeremy Lipka	$25,500,000 — Nolan Law Group

So this firm’s own clients recovered $68.5 million of the $115.75 million. The remaining $47.25 million belonged to another firm’s client. The firm discloses the co-counsel relationship nowhere on its site — though independent outlets did name both firms at the time, in headlines reading “Nolan Law and Katzman, Lampert & McClune Win $115.75 Million.”

We found no reversal, remittitur or reduction of the judgment on appeal, having reviewed 29 opinions involving the National Air Cargo entities. Whether it was ever collected is a separate question we could not answer; National Air Cargo entities have a bankruptcy history, though the reported case touching it concerns a different judgment entirely, and we will not extrapolate.

One further claim does not reconcile. The homepage states: “In just three recent aviation accidents, we recovered more than $150 million for our clients.” Only two aviation matters carry dollar figures anywhere on the site. The third accident is never identified. One of the two named settled in 2008, which is doing a great deal of work for the word “recent.” And the $115.75 million component is not all “for our clients,” as above. We do not repeat the aggregate.

The firm’s verdicts page also carries no prior-results disclaimer. Illinois does not require one, but its absence beside an unreconciled aggregate is a weakness worth naming.

VI. Client Voice

The review volume is very low, and for this firm that is the expected pattern rather than a warning sign: its clients are crash families and catastrophic-injury plaintiffs, not the volume claimants who generate review corpora.

The aggregate is 4.5 out of 5 across 26 reviews — 23 Google, 3 Facebook. Donald Nolan’s Avvo profile shows a 10.0 “Superb” rating with zero client reviews; that score is algorithmic, built from experience and recognitions, and is not a client rating. Yelp blocked retrieval, so its rating and count are unverified. No Glassdoor profile exists. The BBB gives an A+ and displays no complaints, though the firm is not accredited.

We found no one-star pattern — but we want to be exact about what that means. Individual review text was not retrievable from any accessible source, and a 4.5 average across 26 reviews implies some number of sub-five ratings exist. We are reporting an absence of evidence, not a verified absence of negatives, and we are not going to dress the first up as the second. The firm’s own testimonials page carries exactly one entry, from a medical-negligence wrongful-death client identified as “Amy D.” Thin, but not deceptive.

VII. Beyond the Courtroom

Donald Nolan served on the board of the Brain Injury Association of Illinois from 1996 to 2001 and has been an honorary member since 2002 — a claim that gets unusual structural corroboration, because the Association occupies the same 30th floor at 20 N. Clark, a fact stated by an unrelated firm that also shares the floor. He is a trustee of the Civil Justice Foundation and a member of Trial Lawyers for Public Justice and the National Air Disaster Alliance. Thomas P. Routh teaches at the National Spinal Cord Injury Association’s educational conference and the American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants’ annual conference on traumatic brain injury.

Most of the above is from the firm’s own bios and is not independently confirmed by the organizations themselves, the Association’s own website being down with an expired certificate when we checked. The firm claims no pro bono program, no scholarship and no charitable giving, and we found none.

VIII. Credentials and Recognition

A finding that belongs at the top of this section: the firm displays no award badges on its own website at all. No Super Lawyers logo, no Best Lawyers, no “Top 100,” no Martindale seal. Donald Nolan’s bio lists “With Honors” from Elmhurst College under Honors and nothing else. Every credential below we found on third-party sites, not on the firm’s. In a market where the usual practice is a badge wall, that is worth saying plainly.

Peer-reviewed or actually held:

• Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent, 5.0/5.0 — Donald J. Nolan. Judicial and peer ballots; the strongest general credential in the profession.
• ATLA Aviation Law Section, Chair (2004); Railroad Section, Chair (1988–1999); Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, President (2001–02) — elected and appointed offices, not purchasable.
• Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, Secretary (1996–97) — Donald Nolan. ITLA Board of Managers — Thomas P. Routh.
• Chicago Bar Association Tort Litigation Committee, Chair (1989–90).
• Medal for Excellence in Advocacy, American College of Trial Lawyers — Thomas P. Routh; also Best Brief, 1995 CBA Moot Court, and DePaul Law Review.

Mixed: Super Lawyers — Donald Nolan 2005–06 and 2008–2025, with four of the firm’s attorneys currently selected. Research plus peer input, but badge-monetized.

Paid membership programs, which should not be read as honors: Lawyers of Distinction; National Trial Lawyers “Top 100”; and the Avvo 10.0, which is algorithmic. We located no Best Lawyers or Leading Lawyers listing for any attorney here, and no ACTL or ABOTA fellowship.

IX. What We Checked, Including the One Suit Ever Filed Against the Firm

All eight attorneys were run through the Illinois ARDC individually, each confirmed by pulling the full detail record rather than a summary row. Every one is active and authorized at 20 N. Clark with no public record of discipline or pending proceedings. Nolan’s record affirmatively reports malpractice insurance in force; he is also admitted in New York, where Avvo independently reports no misconduct. We validated our search method against a control that returns a real disbarment before relying on any null result — necessary, because our first query returned “your search returned No result(s)” for an attorney we knew to have been disbarred.

For a firm forty-nine years into practice, the roster is unusually clean: no deceased attorney listed as practicing, no departed attorney, no phantom bio, nobody on the website who is not in the roll. The two non-lawyers on the team page are correctly labeled as such. One stale third-party record: the BBB lists a William J. Jovan as a principal contact; the ARDC shows him retired since 2017, with no discipline, and he appears nowhere on the firm’s own site.

There is one lawsuit, and we are going to state it precisely. In Mohamed v. Donald J. Nolan, Ltd., No. 1:12-cv-03016 (E.D.N.Y.), a client whose parents died in the EgyptAir Flight 990 crash sued the firm for legal malpractice, alleging it had failed to secure his appointment as personal representative of the estates within the limitations period under the Death on the High Seas Act, and that his underlying suit was dismissed in 2010 for lack of capacity. The district court granted the motion to dismiss with prejudice in 2013 on the ground that the malpractice claims were themselves time-barred under both New York and Illinois law. The Second Circuit affirmed by summary order on September 12, 2014, with the mandate issuing that November.

That is not a finding of malpractice. It was resolved on limitations and never reached the merits, and the firm won it at every level. We disclose it because the underlying fact — a client’s aviation claim extinguished on a capacity defect during the representation — is in the public record, and a profile that claims adversarial rigor does not get to leave it out. It is the only suit against the firm we located, in any year.

One hazard for anyone checking this firm themselves: there is a different Daniel J. Nolan practicing in Chicago, admitted in 1997, at the defense firm O’Hagan Meyer — twenty years senior to the associate of the same name here. There is also a Kenneth P. Nolan at Speiser Krause in New York, a separate and well-known plaintiff-side aviation lawyer, and an identically named Nolan Law Group, PLLC in Arkansas practicing agricultural intellectual property, whose cases contaminate any full-text search for this firm’s name.

X. The Illinois Legal Backdrop, in Plain English

General information, not legal advice. Statutes below were verified against the Illinois General Assembly, the Illinois Courts, or the current Illinois Compiled Statutes as noted; deadlines turn on facts a lawyer has to look at. Air-disaster claims frequently arise under federal law, international treaty or the Death on the High Seas Act rather than the Illinois provisions below, and those regimes carry their own deadlines.

Illinois does not recognize legal specialists. Illinois Rule of Professional Conduct 7.4(b) states that “The Supreme Court of Illinois does not recognize certifications of specialties in the practice of law, nor does it recognize certifications of expertise in any phase of the practice of law by any agency, governmental or private, or by any group, organization or association.” Rule 7.4(c) bars a lawyer from using “certified,” “specialist” or “expert” to describe their qualifications, except to identify an actual certificate or award — and then only with a disclaimer stating that the Supreme Court of Illinois does not recognize specialty certifications and that the credential is not a requirement to practice law in Illinois. Registered patent attorneys are the single carve-out. No lawyer at this firm is described as a specialist anywhere in this profile, notwithstanding that its aviation practice is as concentrated as any in the state.

Two years, usually. 735 ILCS 5/13-202 gives two years from accrual to file a personal injury action.

Fifty-one percent ends the case. Under 735 ILCS 5/2-1116, a plaintiff more than 50% at fault recovers nothing. At 50% or below, damages are reduced by the plaintiff’s share — the mechanism that cut $6.75 million from the Hasler award in the Bagram case. No contributory fault may be attributed to a plaintiff suing over childhood sexual abuse.

Children get the clock back. 735 ILCS 5/13-211 gives a person injured before turning 18 two years from their eighteenth birthday.

Medical negligence runs on its own clock. Under 735 ILCS 5/13-212, a claim against a physician, dentist, registered nurse or hospital must be brought within two years of when the claimant knew or should have known of the injury, and in no event more than four years after the act or omission. For a person under 18, the period runs eight years from the act but the suit must be filed before the person’s twenty-second birthday.

Public bodies are far shorter. Under 745 ILCS 10/8-101(a), a claim against a local public entity or its employee must be filed within one year. Subsection (b) gives two years, with a four-year repose, only for claims arising out of patient care.

The CTA is one year, and there is no longer a notice requirement. 70 ILCS 3605/41 gives one year from accrual to sue the Chicago Transit Authority. The six-month written notice requirement that older articles still describe was repealed effective June 1, 2009 by P.A. 96-12. It is not current law.

Wrongful death. Under 740 ILCS 180/1 and 180/2, the action is brought by the decedent’s personal representative for the exclusive benefit of the surviving spouse and next of kin, generally within two years of death — five years where the death resulted from violent intentional conduct, or one year after final disposition of a related criminal case for certain charged offenses.

XI. The Awesome Attorneys Assessment

The specific thing Nolan Law Group has is twenty-seven years of docket showing it on one side of aviation litigation and never the other — including a FOIA suit against the FAA to pry loose crash records. Its lead-counsel role in the $165 million Air Philippines settlement is corroborated by two independent newspapers, not asserted. Its principal holds an AV Preeminent rating and has chaired two national trial-bar sections. It keeps a rehabilitation nurse on staff because its cases are brain injuries and burns. And it puts no award badges on its own website, which after a session spent reading Chicago badge walls reads as a deliberate choice.

The limitation is a boutique’s limitation, and it cuts two ways. Eight lawyers cannot staff a mass-casualty MDL alone, which is why the firm’s aviation work is necessarily done alongside other firms — and that is precisely where its own presentation slips. The $115.75 million it advertises is $68.5 million of its own clients’ recoveries plus $47.25 million that belonged to another firm’s client, with no co-counsel disclosed. The “$150 million across three recent aviation accidents” cannot be reconciled at all: the third accident is never named and one of the other two settled in 2008. We could verify the firm’s lead role in exactly one matter; for the rest of the ~120 crashes on its experience page, it claims no role and we could confirm none. And with 26 reviews total and one testimonial, a prospective client has almost nothing independent to read.

This firm is right for the family of someone killed or catastrophically hurt in an air crash — the narrow, technical, expert-heavy litigation it has been doing since the Nantucket and Taipei cases, where twenty-seven years of the same docket is worth more than a large bench. It is also a credible choice for a serious brain-injury or medical-negligence case, where the in-house clinical capability actually applies. It is a poor fit for routine injury work, and a poor fit for anyone who needs the advertised aggregate to survive arithmetic.

Methodology & Sourcing

Research conducted September 14, 2026. Attorney admission dates, registered addresses and disciplinary status were taken from Illinois ARDC registration records for all eight attorneys, using a query method validated against a control surname returning a known disbarment before any null result was relied upon. Plaintiff-side posture was established from 107 federal dockets naming the firm and 69 naming Donald Nolan, reviewed via CourtListener, spanning 1999 to 2026. The Air Philippines settlement and Nolan’s lead-counsel role were corroborated by Gulf News and Philstar; co-counsel Gerald C. Sterns is named from Philstar. The Bagram verdict, its court, judge, date, consolidated case numbers, three-estate breakdown, contributory-negligence reduction and co-counsel identity were taken from PRNewswire, the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin and trade coverage naming both firms. Mohamed v. Donald J. Nolan, Ltd. and its Second Circuit affirmance were verified on the federal docket. Martindale’s AV Preeminent rating was verified on Martindale directly. Statutes were verified against the Illinois General Assembly (735 ILCS 5/13-202, 5/2-1116, 5/13-211), the Illinois Courts’ official rule text (Ill. R. Prof’l Conduct 7.4), and the current Illinois Compiled Statutes as published by secondary repositories carrying the governing Public Act notes (735 ILCS 5/13-212, 745 ILCS 10/8-101, 70 ILCS 3605/41, 740 ILCS 180/1–2), the Illinois General Assembly’s own site being unavailable on the research date. The firm’s founding year, the collectability of the Bagram judgment, its Yelp rating, and its role in any MDL other than Air Philippines are identified in-text as unverified rather than asserted in either direction.

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