The plane was on the ground for all of 10 minutes. “I’m Aria,” the pilot said, welcoming his passenger aboard the turbocharged aircraft whose glass cockpit was outfitted with digital displays presumably reverse-engineered using captured Batplane technology.
Aria — whose last name wouldn’t be revealed until the flight back to the Jefferson Municipal Airport — had been dispatched by his employer to retrieve me, and me alone, on this cold February morning. If he should lose consciousness for some reason at any point during the trip, Aria casually explained, I was to pull the red lever above us to activate the airframe parachute system. And with that, we were en route to his boss, a charismatic millionaire 20 times over whose empire, constructed atop human pain and suffering, took less than 15 years to build. Aria was surely taking me to visit a guy who inhabited some kind of secret volcano lair on an uncharted island. Come to find out, Aria’s employer actually inhabits two islands — one in Oceania and one in the Mediterranean.
But Aria’s boss is no evil super-villain. He’s one step up: A personal injury lawyer. Nevertheless, the origin stories bear a striking similarity — here was a fast-talking kid with an unstable upbringing who wound up being expelled from virtually every school he attended. When he finally left his quaint Midwestern town — in this origin story, the town just happens to be Jefferson — he left angry, and in possession of the kind of intellect that all but guaranteed he would be able to build something from nothing. Whether that something would be for good or evil, however, was anybody’s guess.
And now as Aria piloted the Cirrus SR22T toward a wooded river valley below, it would all become clear. With its micro-breweries, bed and breakfasts, organic food co-op and that eagle nest with a webcam on it, Decorah (pop. 8,127) is about as close to Sherwood Forest as you’ll find in Iowa. Attorney Nick Rowley, who has accumulated a personal net worth of $20 million since he left Jefferson as a troubled teen of 17, has become Robin Hood. Bounding from his black Hummer H1 at Decorah’s municipal airport, Rowley greeted Aria with the kind of massive embrace Robin of Locksley might have once upon a time reserved for Little John. “You know that plane has a parachute,” Rowley, 39, informed his guest.
The theft of powerful painkillers from patients at a Des Moines hospital was not the misstep of a single employee, it was an institutional failure, said attorneys for nine patients who filed a lawsuit Friday against Iowa Methodist Medical Center.
The lawsuit accuses the hospital of being negligent in its supervision of a pharmacy technician who stole fentanyl and Dilaudid during a six-week period from August to October 2016. The employee used a syringe to withdraw the medication and replace it with saline.
The attorneys said more than 100 patients are expected to file lawsuits. They plan to file new suits each week “until we get the truth of what occurred,” said Courtney Rowley, a lawyer for the patients.
Nick Rowley was recently interviewed and showcased on the website MasterPracticeStory.com, a site dedicated to highlighting the best attorneys in their fields of practice. See the full interview in the video below:
The American Law Society Board of Directors is proud to announce that Nicholas Rowley has been accepted as a new member with ATL distinction. Their America Top Lawyers list is comprised of well-rounded individuals representing a diverse cross-section of U.S. legal advocates.
Decorah, IA, January 20, 2017 – Nicholas C. Rowley works for Trial Lawyers for Justice, a practice with office locations across the US that is dedicated to helping families and victims of Brain Injury, Spinal Cord Injury, Wrongful Death, Serious Injury Accidents, Nursing Home Negligence, Insurance Bad Faith, and Medical Malpractice. The practice has garnered hundreds of millions of dollars in record setting verdicts and settlements for injury victims and their families and Nick has been a large part of the firm’s success.
Just a few of his notable triumphs in the courtroom include: a record setting $74,525,000 verdict for a victim of medical malpractice, $40,000,000 for two parents whose 33 year-old son was killed due to corporate negligence, and a $38,600,000 verdict for a man who fell from a hotel balcony while intoxicated.
Nick’s tireless battle to positively change the life of his clients has not gone unnoticed. In 2009, 2010, and 2014, the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles named Nick a finalist for its “Trial Lawyer of the Year” award. In 2009, the Consumer Attorneys of San Diego awarded Nick its “Outstanding Trial Lawyer” award; in 2013, the organization honored Nick with its top award—“Outstanding Trial Lawyer of the Year.”
Nick’s early life foreshadowed his future achievements. He was independent by the age of 15 and began working full-time. He joined the United States Air Force at the age of 17, where he served six honorable years. Through the G.I. Bill, Nick obtained his undergraduate in social psychology by the age of 19 and began law school at the age of 20.
The American Law Society board of directors selectively chooses lawyers who show a history of greatness and consistency. It is a privilege to have Mr. Rowley join the organization.
“We look forward to following Nicholas Rowley’s career and are extremely excited to see his articles, videos, and information posted on American Law Society’s platform.” -Valerie Dougherty of American Law Society.
We’ve covered hundreds of trials here at CVN, and we thought we had seen everything.
That was until plaintiff’s attorney Nick Rowley, during his closing argument in a traumatic brain injury case, began putting on a full body chicken costume complete with gloves, rubber webbed feet and a beak.
However this was no mere courtroom stunt. This was a shrewd maneuver employed by one of the most aggressive and sometimes unconventional plaintiff attorneys in the country to make jurors understand the circumstances that led to his client’s injury and ultimately resulted in a liability verdict that set up a $10.5 million settlement, after an initial offer to resolve the case of only $50,000.
Rowley’s client Mitch Carter was mobbed during a high school football rally after dressing up as the mascot of a rival school, using the same costume that Rowley put on in front of the jury. Rowley argued the school district was responsible for creating the unsafe conditions that caused Carter’s head injury, and after the first phase of a bifurcated trial in June a California state court jury agreed.
A $10.5 million settlement, which Rowley told CVN was the school district’s insurance carrier’s full policy limit, was reached during testimony in the damages phase.
Rowley landed a number of other impressive verdicts that CVN filmed in 2016, but this likely “courtroom first” is the one that comes in at number 3 on our list.
#10 Lin v. LA County MTA – $8.35 million awarded to deceased immigrant’s family
How much is a human life actually worth? It’s a profound and some would even say insensitive question, yet it is one attorneys in wrongful death trials have to frequently ask jurors to grapple with.
This verdict, reached by a Los Angeles County jury in March, closes out our list at Number 10 and addressed how much the family of Yaer Lin, an immigrant from Vietnam, deserved after he was killed in a rear-end collision with an MTA vehicle.
The MTA admitted liability, but attorneys for the Lin family rejected their pretrial settlement offer of $5 million, which was later raised to $7 million after a jury had been seated. Lin’s children were fully grown and had worked as cooks, leaving jurors to weigh that against the central role a patriarch plays in traditional Vietnamese families.
Nick Rowley, who previously made an appearance in the Number 3 spot on our list, relied on the family’s traditional cultural values to beat the MTA’s settlement offer by $1.35 million while walking the fine line involved in asking a jury to assign a hard dollar amount to a deceased person’s life.
A Decorah attorney involved in a record-breaking personal injury award in Howard County is hoping it wakes up insurance company executives in the state of Iowa.
The jury recently awarded nearly $1.6 million to Kelsey Bronner of Cresco, who was injured in a one-vehicle rollover accident April 30, 2008, while a passenger in a vehicle owned and insured by Reicks Farms Inc. of Cresco.
The lawsuit maintained the vehicle was negligently maintained and operated. Bronner was represented by Nick Rowley, a partner at Trial Lawyers for Justice, a law firm headquartered in Decorah that also has offices in California. Other firm members, Rowley’s wife, Courtney Rowley, and Dominic Pechota, also were involved in trying the case. Rod Ritner, another attorney with Trial Lawyers, helped with jury selection.
Rowley said he believes the award is more than the attorney representing the Reicks’ insurance company, who offered a $220,0000 settlement when the trial date was set, expected.
“This was jaw dropping for the insurance company. I think it will have the impact of making insurance companies think a little harder about how they treat people in Iowa … insurance companies might start to value their losses a little better than they currently are,” he said.
