Snyder & Wenner, P.C. has spent four decades pairing medical malpractice trial work with the study of how juries actually decide — a three-partner practice whose name is now attached to what the firm and Phoenix-area news outlets describe as the largest medical malpractice verdict in Arizona history.
BY THE AWESOME ATTORNEYS EDITORIAL TEAM · RESEARCHED AND VERIFIED JULY 8, 2026
A NOTE TO READERS. This profile was researched and written independently by Awesome Attorneys’ editorial team. Snyder & Wenner, P.C. did not pay for, request, or review this article prior to publication, and placement on Awesome Attorneys’ editorial pages cannot be purchased. Case results described here are drawn from the firm’s published materials, court coverage, and news reporting, and are attributed to their sources. Every legal matter is different: past results do not guarantee, warrant, or predict the outcome of any future case. Nothing in this article is legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship.
At a Glance
| Firm | Snyder & Wenner, P.C. |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1983 (per the firm) |
| Offices | Scottsdale (8800 N. Gainey Center Dr., Ste. 265) · Phoenix (2942 N. 24th St., #114) · Tucson (5151 E. Broadway Blvd., Ste. 1600) |
| Partners | Howard M. Snyder · David A. Wenner · Brian A. Snyder |
| Practice focus | Medical malpractice (birth injury, surgical, diagnostic, hospital/ER), wrongful death, catastrophic personal injury, negligent security |
| Signature result | $31,550,825 unanimous jury verdict, Griepentrog v. Banner Health (Maricopa County, Nov. 17, 2023) — reported by the firm and Phoenix media as the largest medical malpractice verdict in Arizona history |
| Recoveries | More than $300 million recovered for clients (firm’s published figure, July 2026) |
| Peer recognition | U.S. News – Best Lawyers “Best Law Firms” (medical malpractice, per the firm); partners listed in Best Lawyers in America and Super Lawyers; Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent (H. Snyder) |
| Distinctive capability | In-house medical professional reviews prospective cases; firm-built jury research practice (focus groups; Jury Bias Model™ co-developed by D. Wenner) |
| Contact | snyderwenner.com · (602) 224-0005 |
I. Eleven Jurors, One Answer
On the afternoon of November 17, 2023, in a Maricopa County courtroom, a verdict was read aloud whose total Arizona’s medical malpractice bar had never seen before: $31,550,825. The verdict was unanimous. Eleven jurors had spent roughly four weeks listening to nurses, obstetricians, neurologists, and geneticists argue over what happened during the fourteen hours before a boy named Greyson Griepentrog was born at what was then Banner Good Samaritan — and they had answered, without dissent, that the hospital’s own conduct caused his brain injury.
Phoenix’s KJZZ reported the award as what is believed to be the largest medical malpractice verdict in Arizona history. Arizona’s Family, the CBS 5/3TV newsroom, carried the same characterization from the trial team. Courtroom View Network, which recorded the trial, later named the case to its Top 10 Most Impressive Plaintiff Verdicts of 2023. The firm whose lawyer delivered the opening statement in that courtroom was neither a national mass-tort brand nor a billboard operation. It was a three-partner practice with roots in a 1983 Phoenix office: Snyder & Wenner, P.C. — known today as Snyder & Wenner Phoenix.
That mismatch — a boutique headcount attached to record-scale outcomes — is the story of the firm. It is also, on the evidence assembled for this profile, not an accident. Snyder & Wenner has spent decades building two unusual assets: a live medical review function inside the firm, and a body of jury-decision research respected far beyond Arizona. When the two meet in a courtroom, the results have repeatedly rewritten the state’s record books.
II. Two Families, Four Decades
The firm dates its founding to 1983, and its architecture has stayed deliberately small: three partners, one shared docket of catastrophic cases. Howard M. Snyder, the founding partner, came to Arizona by way of Pennsylvania — a Villanova University School of Law graduate (J.D., 1974) who served as an associate editor of its law review, was admitted in Pennsylvania in 1974, to the United States Supreme Court in 1976, and to the Arizona bar in 1980. His firm biography describes more than forty years representing Arizonans in wrongful death, catastrophic injury, hospital and medical negligence, and inadequate-security matters, and his peer-review credentials include Best Lawyers in America, Southwest Super Lawyers, and Martindale-Hubbell’s AV Preeminent rating.
David A. Wenner arrived with an unusual toolkit: a psychology degree from Wayne State University (1975) and a master’s in social work from the University of Washington (1977) before his law degree from Arizona State University (1984). That sequence — behavioral science first, law second — became the firm’s intellectual signature, explored in Section III. Wenner was admitted in Arizona in 1984 and to the United States Supreme Court in 1990, and has been listed in Best Lawyers in America continuously since 2000 and in Super Lawyers since 2007, per his firm biography. Best Lawyers named him its “Lawyer of the Year” for plaintiffs’ medical malpractice in Phoenix for 2022, according to the award badge the firm displays; a May 2026 firm update also credits him with the 2024 award.
The second generation is Brian A. Snyder, who joined the firm in 2008 after Brandeis University (B.A., 2005) and Chapman University School of Law (J.D., 2008), where he served as a law journal editor. Born and raised in Arizona, he built his practice on birth injury, brain injury, and hospital negligence cases — and, by the firm’s account, his name is now on the largest medical malpractice verdict in state history, the largest Arizona verdict against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the largest Arizona verdict of any kind in 2017. The Arizona Association for Justice, the state’s plaintiff-bar organization that he previously served as president, named him its Trial Lawyer of the Year for 2023–2024, an award announced in October 2024 and tied expressly to the Griepentrog verdict.
The name on the door, in other words, is literal. A father and son share the letterhead with a behavioral scientist turned trial lawyer, and the firm has resisted the growth playbook that dominates the Phoenix injury market. Its published philosophy is blunt about why: the firm states that it accepts only serious catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases it believes are meritorious, and that it declines matters — including cases a client frames as being only about money — that would dilute that docket.
III. The Science of Twelve Strangers
Most plaintiff firms hire jury consultants. Snyder & Wenner produced one of the field’s reference frameworks. David Wenner is nationally recognized as an authority on juror bias and decision-making, and is credited — with trial lawyer Gregory Cusimano — as co-developer of the Jury Bias Model™, a framework for analyzing how jurors’ pre-existing beliefs shape verdicts in tort cases. He co-developed the Overcoming Juror Bias program for the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (now the American Association for Justice), co-chaired the blue-ribbon committee an ATLA president appointed to study jury bias, chaired the AAJ Jury Project, and served multiple terms on the board of trustees of AAJ’s National College of Advocacy.
His curriculum vitae reads like a touring schedule: faculty appearances at AAJ’s Ultimate Trial Advocacy Course at Harvard Law School and at Georgetown, jury-psychology programs for state trial-lawyer associations from Michigan to Wyoming, and research collaborations his firm biography lists as including a 2000–2001 Roscoe Pound Foundation study at Stanford University on tort-reform rhetoric and juror attitudes. He has published repeatedly in Trial magazine, authored the jury-bias chapter of a standard litigation treatise, and completed a behavioral economics program at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business in 2021, per the certificate the firm displays.
What matters for clients is how the theory feeds practice. The firm’s own description of its method is that it does not guess at persuasion: before trial, it convenes focus groups of people demographically similar to the eventual jury pool and tests the case’s framing against them, then builds the trial presentation around what those groups actually respond to. Brian Snyder has carried the tradition into a second generation of continuing legal education teaching, with programs on jury messaging, mediation persuasion, and cross-examining defense medical experts for the American Association for Justice, the Texas Trial Lawyers, and the State Bar of Arizona, per his firm biography.
IV. Medicine in the Case File
Medical malpractice is the most expensive, most expert-dependent corner of personal injury practice — the daily terrain of a Phoenix medical malpractice attorney and catastrophic injury attorney alike — and Snyder & Wenner Phoenix’s second structural asset addresses it directly: the firm states that its case review process includes an in-house medical professional who analyzes prospective claims from a clinical perspective before the firm commits, supplemented by outside consultants on standard of care and causation. The firm’s materials have described attorneys reviewing and analyzing cases with an on-staff nurse, and its published intake philosophy is candid that an expert’s adverse opinion ends the inquiry — if a qualified reviewer says there is no case, the firm treats that as the answer.
The docket that survives this filter is deliberately narrow. The firm concentrates in catastrophic medical negligence — birth injury and hypoxic brain damage, surgical and anesthesia errors, missed diagnoses of stroke, sepsis, and cancer, hospital and emergency department failures, and urgent care negligence — alongside wrongful death, negligent security, and severe injury litigation — the practice of an Arizona wrongful death lawyer in the fullest sense. Its stated operating discipline is to prepare every accepted case as if it will be tried: evidence disclosed and sequenced for trial, experts retained who are prepared to testify, and no dependence on settlement as the plan.
The firm also frames its work as policy leverage, not just compensation. Its published account is that its cases have prompted hospitals to change internal policies and training and altered how the City of Phoenix approached bus safety — a claims category Awesome Attorneys notes as the firm’s own characterization, but one consistent with the safety-policy violations that sat at the center of its two record verdicts against Banner Health, described next.
V. Anatomy of a Record
The case that produced the number read aloud in Section I began on May 31, 2014, when Krystle Griepentrog arrived at Banner Good Samaritan — today Banner–University Medical Center Phoenix — to deliver her first child. According to the firm’s account and trial coverage, fetal monitoring showed repeated warning signs that the baby was being deprived of oxygen; rather than move to a cesarean delivery, nurses administered and then continued to increase Pitocin, a drug that intensifies contractions, over roughly fourteen hours. Greyson Griepentrog was born in the early morning of June 1, 2014, and was diagnosed with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy; he lives today with cerebral palsy.
Suit was filed in 2020. Banner denied responsibility and, per both the firm and news coverage, made no settlement offer; at trial its retained experts attributed the child’s condition to an undiagnosed genetic disorder rather than the delivery. The trial ran from late October to November 17, 2023, before a Maricopa County jury. Brian Snyder delivered the opening statement and examined many of the expert witnesses, per the firm, working alongside co-counsel from California’s Dordick Law Corporation, whose attorneys also appeared for the family in trial coverage. The jury returned a unanimous verdict of $31,550,825, apportioning fault 57 percent to Banner Health and 43 percent to the attending physician — who, per trial and medical-press coverage, had reached a confidential settlement and been dismissed as a defendant days before trial. Quoted by KJZZ on the hospital’s Pitocin protocol, Brian Snyder said, “These policies are in place for a reason.”
Two postscripts completed the record. First, because the verdict exceeded a $7 million pre-trial offer of judgment, roughly $2 million in sanctions were added, bringing the total above $33 million by the firm’s account. Second, Banner — which told Arizona’s Family it respectfully disagreed with the jury’s decision — moved for a new trial; on April 23, 2024, the trial court denied the motion, finding, per the firm’s report of the ruling, “the verdict is supported by the evidence presented at trial.” In October 2024, announcing Brian Snyder’s Trial Lawyer of the Year award, the firm summed up the outcome in his words: “The jury unanimously told Banner that they caused these injuries.”
VI. A Pattern of Precedent at Snyder & Wenner Phoenix
Griepentrog was not the firm’s first entry in Arizona’s record books against the state’s largest hospital system. In 2017, per the firm, a Tucson jury returned a $15 million verdict against Banner–University Medical Center Tucson after a resident physician violated a hospital safety policy, leaving the patient in a vegetative state — a result the firm describes as the largest Arizona verdict of any kind that year. The firm likewise reports a $3.2 million medical malpractice verdict against the Phoenix VA hospital, profiled by ABC15, which it describes as the largest verdict ever obtained in Arizona against the VA.
Around those peaks sits a ledger that shows why the firm is also known as an Arizona birth injury lawyer resource: a $22 million birth-injury brain damage recovery, a $12.6 million inadequate-security wrongful death at a motel, an $8 million birth injury, a $5.1 million claim against a fitness facility, seven-figure results across nursing home neglect, aviation, psychologist malpractice, and amputation cases. The selection reproduced below is drawn verbatim in amount and category from the firm’s published verdicts and settlements page, retrieved July 8, 2026, and carries the past-results disclaimer that the State Bar of Arizona’s advertising guidance recommends.
Selected Verdicts & Settlements (as published by the firm)
| AMOUNT | MATTER (FIRM’S PUBLISHED DESCRIPTION) |
|---|---|
| $31,550,825 | Birth injury verdict against Banner UMC–Phoenix [Griepentrog v. Banner Health, 2023 — Ed.] |
| $22,000,000 | Medical malpractice during birth resulting in brain injury |
| $15,000,000 | Medical malpractice resulting in brain injury; verdict against Banner UMC–Tucson [2017 — Ed.] |
| $12,600,000 | Inadequate security / wrongful death at motel |
| $8,000,000 | Birth injury causing brain damage |
| $6,000,000 | Personal injury settlement |
| $5,850,000 | Medical malpractice / brain injury |
| $5,100,000 | Negligence of fitness facility resulting in brain injury |
| $4,100,000 | Birth injury causing brain damage |
| $3,200,000 | Medical malpractice verdict against Phoenix VA Hospital |
| $3,000,000 | Nursing home abuse / death |
| $2,150,000 | Medical malpractice during surgery resulting in amputation |
ABOUT THESE RESULTS. Amounts and descriptions above are reproduced from Snyder & Wenner, P.C.’s published (bracketed case identifications are Awesome Attorneys’ editorial additions) verdicts and settlements page (snyderwenner.com/verdicts, retrieved July 8, 2026) and have not been independently confirmed against court records except where noted in this article (the 2023 Griepentrog verdict, corroborated by KJZZ, Arizona’s Family, and Courtroom View Network). Verdicts may be subject to comparative-fault apportionment, post-trial motions, appeal, reduction, or settlement. Past results do not guarantee, warrant, or predict the outcome of any future case; every matter turns on its own facts and law.
In Their Clients’ Words
Snyder & Wenner’s client reviews across independent platforms are consistently top-rated. The excerpts below are drawn from identifiable public reviews on the platforms cited; Awesome Attorneys does not publish composite star-rating averages across platforms, because counts and scores vary by aggregator and date.
“Brian is a wonderful hard working Attorney.”
— Client review, Avvo (posted 2018)
“From the beginning Brian Snyder, Sheri and his staff were amazing.”
— Family review, TrustReviewers, describing a 2016 urgent-care wrongful death case
“This family firm treated us with loyalty.”
— Client review highlighted on Yelp’s listing for the firm’s Phoenix office
“He was there during a stressful time after a motor vehicle accident.”
— Client review, EliteLitigators.com law-firm review page
Community Involvement
The firm’s published community page lists sustained support for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the Brain Injury Alliance of Arizona, Disabled American Veterans, the Wounded Warrior Project, the National WWII Museum, Texas Children’s Hospital, the Maricopa County Bar Association, and local children’s charities. The commitments run through the partners personally as well: Brian Snyder has served as chairman of the board of directors of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Arizona chapter and is involved with organizations supporting children battling cancer, per his firm biography, while David Wenner serves on the board of Bosom Buddies, an Arizona nonprofit cancer organization.
Credentials & Recognition
Howard M. Snyder — Founding Partner
J.D., Villanova University School of Law (1974); associate editor, law review. Bar admissions: Pennsylvania (1974); U.S. District Courts, E.D. Pa. and M.D. Pa. (1975); U.S. Supreme Court (1976); Arizona and U.S. District Court, District of Arizona (1980); U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit (1984). Recognition: Best Lawyers in America and Southwest Super Lawyers (medical malpractice / personal injury); Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent. Service and teaching: Arizona State Bar Civil Jury Instruction Committee (1997–1999); instructor, National Institute for Trial Advocacy Deposition College (2004–2010); author, “Time Warp,” on voir dire limits, Arizona Attorney (Oct. 2006). All per firm biography.
David A. Wenner — Partner
B.A., Psychology, Wayne State University (1975); M.S.W., University of Washington (1977); J.D., Arizona State University (1984). Bar admissions: Arizona and U.S. District Court, District of Arizona (1984); U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit (1985, per firm biography); U.S. Supreme Court (1990). Recognition: Best Lawyers in America (2000–present); Super Lawyers (2007–present); Best Lawyers “Lawyer of the Year,” plaintiffs’ medical malpractice, Phoenix (2022, per firm-displayed badge; 2024 per the firm’s May 2026 update); Diplomate of Trial Advocacy, National College of Advocacy (1997). Leadership: co-developer, Jury Bias Model™ and AAJ’s Overcoming Juror Bias program; chair, AAJ Jury Project; multi-term trustee, AAJ National College of Advocacy; board, Arizona Trial Lawyers. All per firm biography and directory profiles.
Brian A. Snyder — Partner
B.A., Brandeis University (2005); J.D., Chapman University School of Law (2008), law journal editor. Bar admissions: Arizona and U.S. District Court, District of Arizona (2008). Recognition: Arizona Association for Justice Trial Lawyer of the Year (2023–2024, announced Oct. 2024); Best Lawyers “Lawyer of the Year,” medical malpractice (2025 and 2026 editions, consecutive, per the firm’s award announcements of Aug. 2024 and Sept. 2025); Best Lawyers in America (since 2021); Super Lawyers (since 2022; Rising Star 2014–2021); National Trial Lawyers “Top 40 Under 40” (2013); Phoenix Magazine “Top Attorney” (since 2022). Leadership: past president, Arizona Association for Justice. All per firm biography and firm announcements.
The Arizona Legal Backdrop
Arizona is a distinctive jurisdiction for medical negligence claims, and the Griepentrog verdict is legible only against that backdrop. Start with the state constitution: Article 2, Section 31 provides that “No law shall be enacted in this state limiting the amount of damages to be recovered for causing the death or injury of any person” (subject to a narrow felony-crime-victim exception added by later amendment), and Article 18, Section 6 separately protects the right of action for damages. Arizona is therefore one of the few states in which the legislature cannot cap medical malpractice damages — which is why a $31.5 million jury award can stand without statutory reduction, subject only to ordinary post-trial and appellate review.
Key statutes for Arizona medical negligence and injury claims
| PROVISION | EFFECT |
|---|---|
| Ariz. Const. art. 2, § 31 | Prohibits laws capping damages for death or personal injury |
| A.R.S. § 12-542 | Two-year general statute of limitations for personal injury and wrongful death actions |
| A.R.S. § 12-502 | Tolling of limitations for minors and persons of unsound mind |
| A.R.S. §§ 12-821, 12-821.01 | Claims against public entities/employees: 180-day notice of claim; one-year suit deadline |
| A.R.S. § 12-2505 | Comparative negligence — a claimant’s fault reduces but does not automatically bar recovery |
| A.R.S. § 12-2506 | Several liability — fault apportioned among defendants and nonparties (the mechanism behind Griepentrog’s 57/43 split) |
| A.R.S. § 12-563 | Elements of proof in a medical malpractice action (deviation from standard of care; proximate cause) |
| A.R.S. § 12-2603 | Preliminary expert opinion affidavit required with initial disclosures in claims against health care professionals |
| A.R.S. § 12-2604 | Expert witness qualifications: same-specialty (and board-certification-matched) requirements; contingent expert fees barred |
Every provision in this table was verified against the Arizona Legislature’s published text at azleg.gov on July 8, 2026; Ariz. Const. art. 18, § 6 was additionally confirmed against Justia’s published constitutional text.
Two of these provisions do most of the sorting work in medical cases. Section 12-2603 requires a plaintiff to serve a preliminary expert opinion affidavit — a sworn physician or health-professional opinion identifying the standard-of-care breach — at the very outset, with dismissal without prejudice available for noncompliance. Section 12-2604 then polices who may testify at all: the standard-of-care expert must practice in the same specialty as the defendant, must match the defendant’s board certification, must have spent the majority of the prior year in clinical practice or teaching in that field, and may not be paid contingently. Together they make Arizona medical malpractice a field with a high barrier to entry — and reward exactly the infrastructure Snyder & Wenner has built: clinical review before filing, and a bench of qualified experts prepared to testify.
The Awesome Attorneys Assessment
Awesome Attorneys profiles firms whose public record supports the weight of the page, and Snyder & Wenner Phoenix’s does. The verifiable spine of the story is unusually strong: a 2023 record verdict corroborated by independent newsrooms and a courtroom video service, a trial court’s 2024 refusal to disturb it, a genuine intellectual contribution to trial practice in the Jury Bias Model™ and the AAJ curriculum built around it, and a four-decade Arizona presence with no attorney discipline surfacing in our review of bar-directory and news sources.
The honest caveats are the ordinary ones. Most entries on the firm’s results ledger are the firm’s own reports, not court records we inspected; the Griepentrog trial was tried with out-of-state co-counsel, a common structure in cases of this scale that the firm’s own release does not emphasize; and superlatives like “largest in state history” are, as everywhere in this market, the trial bar’s accounting rather than an official statistic. None of that dents the core finding. For families facing the hardest category of case Arizona law recognizes — a child injured at birth, a death inside a hospital — this is one of a small number of Arizona firms whose record, method, and peer standing all point the same direction.
Awesome Attorneys’ editorial conclusion: Snyder & Wenner, P.C. merits inclusion in this series as the Phoenix market’s defining example of the scientific trial boutique — small by headcount, first in the record books.
Methodology & Sources
This profile was researched and verified on July 8, 2026. Primary sources: snyderwenner.com (homepage; attorney biographies for Howard Snyder, David Wenner, and Brian Snyder; verdicts and settlements page; community support page; firm press releases dated November 18, 2023, October 2024, and September 2025; firm litigation updates of April–June 2024 and May 2026). Independent corroboration for the Griepentrog verdict: KJZZ (Phoenix NPR affiliate); Arizona’s Family (3TV/CBS 5), November 18, 2023; Courtroom View Network trial record and Top 10 Most Impressive Plaintiff Verdicts of 2023 listing (Griepentrog v. Banner Health, et al., Maricopa County Superior Court No. CV2020-052367, tried October–November 17, 2023); MDLinx medical-press coverage of the award, apportionment, and sanctions. Directory and standing checks: State Bar of Arizona-fed directory listings via FindLaw, Justia, Avvo, and Super Lawyers; Better Business Bureau profile (Scottsdale listing, rated A+ though not BBB-accredited, as of the research date); Trial Guides author profile (D. Wenner). Legal framework verified against the Arizona Legislature’s published statutes and constitution at azleg.gov — art. 2, § 31 and A.R.S. §§ 12-502, 12-542, 12-563, 12-821, 12-821.01, 12-2505, 12-2506, 12-2603, and 12-2604 all confirmed against azleg.gov text this session, with art. 18, § 6 confirmed via Justia’s published text — and against the State Bar of Arizona’s published advertising-ethics guidance. Client testimonial excerpts are quoted verbatim, under fifteen words each, from one identified review per platform. No compensation was sought or received from the firm; the firm was not contacted prior to publication of this draft.
Publisher Disclosure & Independence Notice
This profile is an independent editorial article published by Awesome Attorneys. Awesome Attorneys does not endorse, recommend, or warrant any lawyer or law firm profiled on this site, and inclusion in this series is not paid placement. “Awesome Attorneys” is a brand name only; it is not a rating, ranking, or claim that any profiled firm is superior in any legal category.
Awesome Attorneys maintains a separate attorney directory. Only listings there marked “Sponsored” or “Ad” reflect a paid or sponsored relationship with Awesome Attorneys; this editorial profile is not such a listing.
Facts, figures, and claims in this profile were independently researched from public sources as described in the Methodology & Sources section and are current only as of the research date; they are subject to change without notice, and readers should confirm any detail directly with the firm before relying on it. This notice supplements, and does not replace, the A Note to Readers notice at the top of this article.