Cavanagh Sorich Law Group: Five of Six Warning Signs Were Missing, and the Jury Said $104.6 Million

Attorney advertising. This profile was not paid for, commissioned, or reviewed by the firm before publication. Awesome Attorneys is not a lawyer referral service and does not endorse, recommend, or warrant any firm. Results described below are attributed to their published source; past results do not guarantee or predict the outcome of any future case. Nothing here is legal advice.

A note on the name. This firm was Cavanagh Law Group and is now Cavanagh Sorich Law Group, following Michael J. Sorich’s elevation to name partner after about eight years at the firm. The domain never changed, which is why some pre-rebrand pages are still live and still say the old name. It is also not related in any way to The Cavanagh Law Firm, P.A. of Phoenix, which this publication has separately profiled — that is a different entity, in a different state, with a substantial insurance-defense practice.

At a Glance

Firm	Cavanagh Sorich Law Group (formerly Cavanagh Law Group)
Founded	1997, by Timothy J. Cavanagh, after leaving an associate’s job at Corboy & Demetrio
Office	161 North Clark Street, Suite 2070, Chicago, IL 60601 — single office, no branches
Focus	Catastrophic injury and wrongful death; railroad and FELA; trucking; medical malpractice; product liability; road-construction negligence; a dedicated police “code of silence” civil-rights practice
Side of the docket	Plaintiff only, firm-wide. Three attorneys came from prosecution or defense backgrounds.
Size	Eight attorneys — five partners, two of counsel, one founder
Signature result	$104.6 million verdict, October 9, 2025 — Johnson et al. v. Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, Circuit Court of Cook County No. 24-L-013349. Post-trial and appellate status unresolved.
Cleanest result	$55.71 million, Velarde v. Illinois Central R.R. — affirmed outright on appeal, no remittitur.
Fee model	Contingency (per the firm)
Disciplinary record	No discipline located for the two attorneys checked; six were not checked. See Section VIII.

I. The Assessor, the Civil Division Chief, and the Clerk

Timothy J. Cavanagh’s mother clerked at the Circuit Court of Cook County. One uncle, Tom Tully, was the Cook County Assessor. Another, Pat Driscoll, ran the civil division at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. He grew up inside the Cook County legal system before he ever applied to law school.

He took his J.D. from Chicago-Kent in 1987 and went to work as an associate at Corboy & Demetrio — the benchmark against which Chicago plaintiff firms are measured. In 1997 he left to start his own, and he has given the reason on the record: “I wanted to have my own firm, my own team — to practice with people I wanted to practice with and represent clients I wanted to represent.”

That pedigree is worth stating because it appears nowhere on the firm’s own website. The Corboy connection is documented only in third-party legal press. A firm whose founder trained at the most respected plaintiff shop in the city has left that fact entirely out of its own story.

II. The Mechanism: A Rail Practice Nobody Else in the Batch Has

What structurally separates this firm from the other Chicago plaintiff practices is not size or volume — it is that the unions bring it the railroad cases.

Of counsel Daniel Downes is designated legal counsel to the Association of Train Dispatchers, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes, the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen and SMART Transportation Division, and is a past president of the Academy of Rail Labor Attorneys. Before he was a lawyer he spent eighteen years as a Chicago Police detective. FELA — the Federal Employers’ Liability Act — is a different statutory world from ordinary negligence, with its own comparative-fault arithmetic and its own body of case law, and firms that do it well tend to do it because a union put them there.

The second distinctive line is the firm’s dedicated “Code of Silence” practice page — civil suits premised on police officers covering for one another. That is a specific and unusual thing to build out as a named practice area, and the firm has a result behind it (Section IV).

The roster reflects a deliberate mix of backgrounds: Michael J. Sorich spent thirteen years at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office; Marc E. McCallister defended hospitals and healthcare professionals at a large insurance defense firm; Jason M. Kroot arrived in March 2020 from a large Midwest injury firm where he managed the medical malpractice division; David O’Connor, of counsel, is a former Cook County felony trial supervisor who teaches at DePaul and Loyola and also runs his own separate firm.

III. Practice Areas

• Railroad injury and FELA; railroad crossing collisions
• Truck and commercial vehicle collisions
• Road-construction and work-zone negligence
• Medical malpractice
• Product liability
• Catastrophic injury and wrongful death
• Police misconduct and “code of silence” civil rights claims
• Motor vehicle collisions

IV. Track Record

Past results do not guarantee or predict the outcome of any future case. Figures independently corroborated are marked; the rest are firm-published and, being confidential settlements, cannot be checked either way.

$104,600,000	Verdict, October 9, 2025 — Johnson et al. v. Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, Cook County No. 24-L-013349, Hon. Scott McKenna. Four-week trial, roughly six hours’ deliberation. $80.5 million to Rob Rosá, left a C6/C7 quadriplegic; $24.1 million to Michael Johnson for loss of companionship. Independently reported by four Chicago outlets. Post-trial and appellate status unresolved — see below.
$55,710,000	Velarde v. Illinois Central R.R. (2002) — railroad crossing, four plaintiffs. Affirmed by the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, November 8, 2004; 354 Ill. App. 3d 523. Every defense argument rejected, including excessiveness. No remittitur ordered. Note the advertised figure is the gross verdict; a 5% comparative-fault finding against one plaintiff reduced the judgment slightly.
$50,000,000	FELA railroad case, 2024. Confidential; not independently verifiable.
$27,000,000	Trucking wrongful death, 2023. Confidential; not independently verifiable.
$20,000,000	“Code of silence” settlement with the City of Chicago, approved February 2018 — Cazares and Manzera v. Frugoli, N.D. Ill. Independently confirmed. A combined settlement for two families, split evenly; co-counsel Cooney & Conway represented the second family and is properly credited by this firm.
$14,000,000	Vlachos v. Hungerford — birth injury. Firm-sourced.
$13,720,000	Czapski v. Maher. Firm-sourced.

What happened on the tollway. On March 25, 2016, a limousine rolled over on I-90 near the Fox River Bridge outside Elgin. One passenger was killed and five were seriously injured. The liability theory the jury accepted was negligent temporary traffic control: five of the six required advance warning signs were missing before a sudden lane shift. Rob Rosá was left quadriplegic; Michael Johnson is his husband.

What has not happened yet. Eleven months after the verdict we found no record of judgment entry, post-trial ruling, remittitur, appeal or payment. The defendant is a state instrumentality, and contemporaneous reporting said the Tollway was still reviewing the verdict and had not said whether it would appeal or move to reduce. Nothing in this profile should be read as saying that money has been recovered. A jury returned $104.6 million; what the Tollway ultimately pays is not on the public record.

The one claim we will not carry. A press release issued under this firm’s name and syndicated to a legal-industry outlet is headlined “Obtains $104M Verdict, Largest in Illinois History,” and its body calls it “the largest verdict or settlement in Illinois history for an automobile crash case.” That is false. A Cook County jury returned $363 million in 2022 — publicly ranked the highest Illinois verdict of that year — and another returned $148 million to a woman paralyzed at O’Hare, a case squarely comparable on county, injury and defendant type. What makes this finding worth reporting rather than damning is that the firm’s own website never makes the unqualified claim. Its case-results page and news item both say “the largest verdict or settlement in Illinois history for a road construction case” — a much narrower assertion, which we could not verify against any neutral verdict reporter but which is at least plausible. A firm whose own site is more careful than its press agent is a different animal from one lying on its homepage. We note both and repeat neither.

The lifetime aggregate is stated five different ways. The current About page and founder’s bio say “more than $900 million.” A Chicago Bar Association sponsored profile says “nearly $1 billion.” A firm-submitted business-press entry says “over $800 million.” And the firm’s own orphaned pre-rebrand page — still live on the same domain, still describing Cavanagh as “founding partner of Cavanagh Law Group” — says “over $500 million.” Everything itemized on the results page totals roughly $429 million. Confidential settlements make a gap normal; four simultaneous headline numbers and a live page four hundred million dollars behind the current one is a disclosure-hygiene problem. We cite only itemized figures in this profile and repeat no aggregate.

There is also no prior-results disclaimer on the homepage or the case-results page. The site-wide footer covers “not legal advice” and no attorney-client relationship, and stops there, beneath twelve headline figures.

V. Client Voice

This section is genuinely thin, and the reason is interesting rather than damning.

Michael J. Sorich holds a 10.0 Avvo rating and 5.0 across three client reviews. Timothy J. Cavanagh holds a 10.0 Avvo rating and zero client reviews. BBB: A+, not accredited, file opened December 2011. There is no testimonials page anywhere on the site. Google and Yelp were not retrievable, so we assert no rating for either and we make no claim that this firm has no negative reviews — we did not reach them.

• John (Avvo, on Michael Sorich): “Mike was awesome to work with. From the very start, he was able to use his experience to help develop a solid strategy.”
• Anonymous (Avvo, on Michael Sorich): “Michael is very meticulous and detail-orientated. He is easy to talk to and communicates well with his clients.”

The honest reading of three total client reviews at a firm with a $104 million verdict: this is a referral-and-trial practice, not a consumer advertising shop. Firms that run television and search advertising accumulate hundreds of reviews because they take hundreds of clients. Firms that take a small number of catastrophic cases sent by other lawyers do not. A client should understand that as a description of the business model, and should also understand that it means there is very little independent client feedback to consult before hiring — which cuts both ways.

VI. Beyond the Courtroom

Specific, role-level, and verifiable — which is more than most firms in this metro can show.

• Marc E. McCallister is Board Chair and Secretary of Tutoring Chicago, and received that organization’s “My Hero Award” in 2023. This is the most concrete civic commitment on the roster.
• Timothy J. Cavanagh sits on the Board of Ambassadors of Mercy Home for Boys & Girls, and on the Board of Directors of John Carroll University, his undergraduate alma mater.
• Stacey Feeley Cavanagh serves on the Guild Board of the Boys & Girls Club of Chicago.
• Christopher H. Dietmann has supported Cycle for Survival for more than a decade.

Named organizations, named roles. Not “we give back.”

VII. Credentials and Recognition

Verified at the conferring body:

• Best Lawyers in America — checked on Best Lawyers directly. Timothy J. Cavanagh, Personal Injury Litigation–Plaintiffs and Wrongful Death, listed since 2015, current through the 2027 edition, and “Lawyer of the Year,” Personal Injury Litigation–Plaintiffs, Chicago, 2022. Michael J. Sorich, Personal Injury Litigation–Plaintiffs, Product Liability Litigation–Plaintiffs and Transportation Law, since 2023. Two of eight attorneys — and the firm does not overstate it.
• Best Law Firms — Tier 1, Chicago, in both Personal Injury Litigation–Plaintiffs and Product Liability Litigation–Plaintiffs, 2026 edition. Note this program requires firm participation, so treat it as survey-based rather than purely peer-conferred.
• Illinois Trial Lawyers Association leadership — and here a correction is required. Michael J. Sorich sits on ITLA’s 2026–27 Board of Managers, confirmed on ITLA’s own roster. Timothy J. Cavanagh was ITLA’s president for the 2025–26 term and is now Immediate Past President. His firm bio still says, in the present tense, that he “currently serves as its President” and that “this year, Cavanagh took the helm.” ITLA’s own officers page lists Michael T. Mertz as the current president. The presidency was real; the bio was not updated after the June 2026 installation.
• International Society of Barristers — Fellow, announced June 2026. Invitation-only.
• Chicago Bar Association — Sorich serves on the Judicial Evaluation Committee. The CBA “law firm profile” page is a paid directory listing and is not a CBA honor; we do not count it as recognition.

Editorial selections (real, but journalism rather than peer adjudication): Crain’s Notable Litigators & Trial Attorneys 2025; Chicago Daily Law Bulletin “40 Under Forty” 2025 for Dietmann; Lawdragon 500 listings for five attorneys — noting that the firm also pays that outlet for press-release syndication, which is the same outlet that carried the “largest in Illinois history” headline.

Paid or fee-based, listed separately: Super Lawyers and Rising Stars for five attorneys; The National Trial Lawyers “Top 100”; “America’s Top 100 Attorneys”; Irish Legal 100; “Who’s Who in American Law”; Elite Lawyer. Leading Lawyers sits between the two categories — peer-balloted but commercially operated.

VIII. What We Checked, and What We Could Not

We searched for Illinois ARDC discipline, sanctions and legal malpractice suits against the firm and its attorneys. Nothing was found. Avvo’s mirror of state bar data reports “no misconduct found” and active, authorized status for Timothy John Cavanagh (Illinois 1987) and Michael Jude Sorich (Illinois 2003; Florida 2004, member in good standing).

The limit, plainly: the ARDC’s own database is a form that does not return results to a direct request, and we could not query the primary source on the research date. Stacey Feeley Cavanagh, Jason M. Kroot, Marc E. McCallister, Christopher H. Dietmann, Daniel Downes and David O’Connor were not checked at all, and this profile asserts nothing about their records. Civil dockets were not searched.

A structural note on the firm’s own history pages. Two pre-rebrand pages are still live and were never redirected. They serve the old firm name, describe Cavanagh as “founding partner of Cavanagh Law Group,” and state “over $500 million in settlements and verdicts since 1997” — against “$900 million” on the current bio. Two contradictory biographies of the same lawyer, on the same domain, four hundred million dollars apart. Separately, the March 2020 press release announcing Jason Kroot’s arrival has been retroactively rewritten to carry the current firm name while keeping its original pre-rebrand URL, which obscures the firm’s own timeline.

One thing this firm does not do, and it is worth crediting explicitly: the recurring trap in this metro is a rebranded firm advertising a predecessor’s work. It does not apply here. Same entity, same founder, same domain since 1997; the rebrand added a name partner and nothing else. Both verifiable headline results — Velarde in 2002 and the tollway verdict in 2025 — were earned at this firm, and no co-counsel attribution problem was found on either. On the $20 million police case, the firm names Cooney & Conway as counsel for the other family without being asked to.

Two smaller items. The firm’s disclosure that the $20 million was split between two families appears only on one of counsel’s bio page; three other bios and the results table present a flat $20 million. And firm-wide results appear on individual bios without role qualification, including on the bio of an attorney who was not admitted in Illinois until 2023 — though he was verifiably on the tollway trial team, so that entry is earned.

IX. The Illinois Legal Backdrop, in Plain English

General information, not legal advice. Statutes below were verified as described in Methodology; deadlines turn on facts a lawyer has to look at. FELA claims against a railroad run on federal law and a three-year federal limitations period, not on the Illinois statutes below.

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.

Public bodies get one year, and this is the rule that matters most for a firm suing highway authorities and municipalities. Under 745 ILCS 10/8-101(a), a claim against a local public entity or its employee must be filed within one year — half the ordinary deadline. Subsection (b) gives two years, with a four-year repose, only for claims arising out of patient care. A work-zone crash, a police-pursuit injury and a municipal road-design claim can all land under this one-year clock.

Two years, otherwise. 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 5% comparative-fault finding in Velarde is exactly this rule in operation — it did not bar the claim, it trimmed the judgment.

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 that person’s twenty-second birthday.

The CTA is one year, with no 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.

X. The Awesome Attorneys Assessment

The claim this firm can actually prove is that it tries cases and the verdicts survive. That is not a slogan; it is the appellate record. Velarde went up on every ground a railroad’s lawyers could raise — day-in-the-life video, fault allocation, excessiveness of damages, improper closing — and the First District rejected all of it and ordered no remittitur. In a metro where this publication keeps finding advertised verdicts that were cut, vacated or quietly settled for a fraction, a fifty-five-million-dollar judgment affirmed outright is a genuinely different fact. The 2025 tollway verdict, four independent outlets deep and with the firm’s own account of the crash location more accurate than one national source’s, suggests the capability did not retire with the founder’s ITLA term. Add a rail and FELA practice sourced from four national unions, a former police detective and a retired felony trial supervisor on the roster, Best Lawyers verified at the source with no inflation, and named civic roles at Tutoring Chicago and Mercy Home, and this is a serious firm.

The trade-off is that the firm has grown faster than it updates anything it has written. Its founder’s bio says he is ITLA’s president; ITLA says he is the immediate past president. Two pre-rebrand pages are still live claiming half the lifetime recovery the current pages claim. The aggregate exists in four versions simultaneously and none of them reconciles with the $429 million the firm itemizes. There is no prior-results disclaimer under twelve eight-figure numbers. And a press release issued in this firm’s name carried a superlative — “largest in Illinois history” — that is demonstrably untrue, even though the firm’s own website consistently uses the narrower and defensible version. The second trade-off is quieter: three client reviews in total. That is what a referral practice looks like, and it means a prospective client has almost no independent voice to consult.

This firm is right for a catastrophic case that will have to be tried — a railroad or FELA claim, a work-zone or highway-design case against a public authority, a police-misconduct suit — where the question is not who will settle it but who can put it in front of a jury and keep the number on appeal. It is the wrong firm for a routine collision claim, which its structure is not built to process at volume, and a poor fit for someone who wants a large body of client reviews to read before they call. Anyone who does call should ask one direct question about the tollway verdict: what has actually been collected.

Methodology & Sourcing

Research conducted September 15, 2026. Entity name, address, roster, practice areas and advertised figures were read directly from the firm’s own live pages, including each attorney bio, the case-results page and the contact page; the two live pre-rebrand pages were fetched separately and their contradictory content is reported rather than resolved. The October 2025 tollway verdict — amount, damages split, docket number and caption, trial judge, deliberation length, crash date and location, and the missing advance warning signs — was taken from four independent Chicago news outlets and a litigation-industry report; the firm’s own case caption differs from the docket caption and the docket caption is used here. The absence of any post-trial or appellate record was established by search as of the research date and is reported as unresolved, not as final. Velarde v. Illinois Central R.R., 354 Ill. App. 3d 523 (1st Dist. Nov. 8, 2004), was read for its disposition, fault allocation and the court’s rejection of the excessiveness argument. The February 2018 Cazares and Manzera v. Frugoli settlement was confirmed through independent reporting, as was co-counsel’s role. The “largest in Illinois history” superlative was checked against two publicly reported larger Illinois verdicts and is reported as false; the firm’s narrower on-site version is reported as unverified. Aggregate figures were collected from four firm-controlled or firm-submitted sources and no aggregate is repeated. Best Lawyers and Best Law Firms recognitions were verified on those programs’ own properties; ITLA offices and board membership were verified on ITLA’s own officers and board rosters. Review figures come from Avvo and BBB directly; Google and Yelp were unreachable and no rating is asserted for either, and no claim is made about the absence of negative reviews. Discipline findings rest on Avvo’s mirror of state bar data for two of eight attorneys; the ARDC primary database could not be queried on the research date and six attorneys were not checked, as stated in Section VIII. 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 unreachable on the research date. Claims we could not verify are marked as unverified rather than softened or omitted.

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Awesome Attorneys does not endorse, recommend, or warrant any firm profiled on this site. Inclusion is not paid placement, and no firm pays to appear, to be positioned, or to have material removed. “Awesome Attorneys” is a brand name only; it is not a rating, ranking, certification or assessment of any lawyer’s ability. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and reading it creates no attorney-client relationship. Facts are current only as of the research date above, and firm addresses, rosters, credentials and case outcomes change. Verify anything you intend to rely on directly with the firm and with the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission.