{"id":698421,"date":"2026-04-02T00:34:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T00:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/698421\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T00:34:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T00:34:14","slug":"chicago-lawyers-seek-2-billion-for-fatal-transport-of-dry-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/698421\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago lawyers seek $2 billion for fatal transport of dry ice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Johnson began his day of work transporting four coolers of strawberries from St. Charles, Missouri, to Fayetteville, Arkansas, in a small Honda hatchback.<\/p>\n

He wouldn\u2019t finish the drive.<\/p>\n

The coolers \u2014 given to him by a subsidiary of well-known Illinois dairy company Prairie Farms Dairy Inc. \u2014 contained dry ice. Court documents claim that no one informed Johnson of the dangers of the substance, which is the solid form of carbon monoxide. He was found unconscious at the wheel an hour and a half after beginning his Aug. 5, 2016, drive and died in the hospital a few days later.<\/p>\n

In February, a jury in Madison County, Illinois, near St. Louis, awarded the Johnson family $241 million in damages<\/a> as the result of a wrongful death lawsuit. Now, Chicago-based lawyers are seeking even more money for the family: upward of $2 billion in an insurance bad faith lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois.<\/p>\n

Johnson, 64, was a husband married for over 40 years and father of five children who ran his own courier company, CJS Express, his attorneys said. During a Wednesday news conference, lawyers alleged that Prairie Farms\u2019 insurance company, Travelers Property Casualty Company of America, refused to settle the wrongful death lawsuit.<\/p>\n

The new lawsuit claims that Prairie Farms wanted to settle the earlier case for an amount acceptable to the family, but Travelers refused to pay, forcing both the family and dairy company to go to trial.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s occurred in this case is, in the collective more than a century of experience of the lawyers at this table, the most egregious example of bad faith of an insurer we have ever seen,\u201d said lawyer Lance Northcutt.<\/p>\n

Representatives for Prairie Farms Dairy and Travelers Property Casualty Co. did not immediately return requests for comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cBad faith\u201d is a legal term used to describe an insurer when it acts unreasonably or dishonestly when handling a claim, according to legal database Justia.<\/a> Insurance bad faith claims can stem from different factors, including when an insurance company refuses to settle a claim within policy limits and therefore risks exposing its client to a larger liability at trial.<\/p>\n

Under Illinois law, a third party awarded an amount in damages that exceeds the insured party\u2019s policy limits in a wrongful death lawsuit can assume the bad faith claim alleging wrongful failure to settle the case, the lawyers explained. This is what allows Paula Johnson, Johnson\u2019s wife, to file suit against Travelers.<\/p>\n

\"EricEric Johnson, with his wife, Paula Johnson, from Madison County, Illinois, died on Aug. 5, 2016, after being exposed to a high concentration of carbon dioxide while transporting dry ice as part of his job. In addition to his wife, Johnson left behind two disabled children who relied on him for daily support, along with three adult children. (Madison County court)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe result of that bad faith was both the prolonging of the Johnsons\u2019 suffering as a result of the tragic death of Eric and them being put through nearly 10 years of litigation and a trial,\u201d lawyer Patrick Salvi Jr. said.<\/p>\n

Since her husband\u2019s death, Paula Johnson had to close her sewing business to run CJS Express, her attorneys said. Her full-time job is now caring for two adult disabled children, whom she and her husband adopted expecting to care for together, as a single parent, Northcutt said, and it\u2019s \u201ctaken everything out of her.\u201d<\/p>\n

He hopes the damages awarded by the jury in the wrongful death lawsuit can help Paula Johnson, who was not at the news conference, provide for her family and allow her some rest.<\/p>\n

\u201cEric\u2019s death has truly devastated this family in ways that continue to manifest themselves every day of their lives,\u201d Northcutt said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eric Johnson began his day of work transporting four coolers of strawberries from St. Charles, Missouri, to Fayetteville,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":698422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,136224,292070,39778,5386,1818,292071,224699],"class_list":["post-698421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-chicago","tag-dry-ice","tag-dry-ice-death","tag-eric-johnson","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-prairie-farms","tag-wrongful-death-lawsuit"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116332309307562217","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}