O’Donnell Park Wrongful Death Lawsuit: $39M Verdict and Walker’s Role

The O’Donnell Park wrongful death lawsuit ended in a $39 million Milwaukee County jury verdict against Advance Cast Stone, the company that installed the decorative concrete panels on the downtown parking garage where a 13-ton slab broke free on June 24, 2010 and killed 15-year-old Jared Kellner. The case also produced a separate appellate fight that capped the insurer’s exposure at $10 million, and it forced the release of emails showing how then-County Executive Scott Walker’s gubernatorial campaign worked to shape the response in the hours and weeks after the collapse.

What Happened at the Garage

The O’Donnell Park garage sits along Milwaukee’s lakefront at 910 East Michigan Street, with a public park on its roof. On the evening of June 24, 2010, a single 30-foot precast concrete panel detached from an entryway wall and fell on three people walking to Summerfest. Jared Kellner was killed instantly. Amy Wosinski’s injuries were severe enough that her lower left leg was amputated. Her son Eric suffered a broken right leg.¹ Milwaukee County shut the garage down and began an investigation that would run about a year.²

Why the Panel Fell

An engineering study commissioned by the county and performed by CTL Group traced the failure to construction defects from the early 1990s rather than to any later neglect. The 70 exterior panels were designed to be fastened with four predrilled holes and stainless steel pins each. Advance Cast Stone instead used a “drill-and-pound” shortcut with only two pins per panel, hammering them into the concrete ramp walls. That method cracked the underlying walls and left many connections structurally compromised. The study concluded that more than a third of all panel connections were “potentially in a state of incipient failure.”³

A parallel investigation by Inspec Inc. and CTL Group confirmed that nearly all 70 panels had been installed incorrectly and that no approved change order existed for the altered method.⁴ Structural problems had dogged the garage since its original construction in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the county fired and sued the project’s architect over design defects.⁵

The Lawsuit and the $39 Million Verdict

The Kellner family, the Wosinski family, and Milwaukee County sued in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, in cases docketed as 2011CV1003, 2011CV1007, and 2012CV8327.⁶ The defendants included Advance Cast Stone, the panel installer, and J.H. Findorff & Son, the general contractor. Findorff reached a confidential settlement with the plaintiffs in July 2013 before trial.⁷

The remaining claims against Advance Cast Stone went to a jury before Circuit Judge Christopher Foley. On November 21, 2013, the jury returned a $39 million verdict, finding that Advance Cast Stone had intentionally concealed and misrepresented the defects in its installation. Fault was allocated 88% to Advance Cast Stone, 10% to Findorff, and 2% to Milwaukee County.⁸ The damages broke down as follows:

$6.8 million in compensatory damages to the Kellner family.
$11.4 million in compensatory damages to the Wosinski family.
$6 million in compensatory damages to Milwaukee County for repair costs and lost revenue.
$15 million in punitive damages against Advance Cast Stone.¹

The Appeal and the Insurance Cap

Advance Cast Stone tried to have the award drastically reduced or to win a new trial, arguing trial errors and judicial bias. A separate fight concerned whether Liberty Insurance, the company’s insurer, was on the hook for the full $39 million. The trial court had initially ruled that Liberty owed the entire amount because it had failed to defend its policyholder.

On July 11, 2017, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld the $39 million verdict but partially reversed the insurance ruling, holding that Liberty was responsible only up to its $10 million policy limit. The case was sent back to the trial court for further proceedings in light of that cap.⁹¹⁰ Reporting at the time said it could be years before the families saw any or all of the money.¹¹

What the Litigation Revealed About Walker’s Campaign

The collapse happened five months before the November 2010 gubernatorial election, and Walker was both the sitting county executive responsible for the garage and a candidate for governor. Emails originally seized during a secret “John Doe” investigation into Walker’s county aides were later released to Judge Foley for use in the wrongful death case, after retired Appeals Judge Neal Nettesheim authorized prosecutors to identify records relevant to the civil suit.¹²

Within hours of the accident, campaign manager Keith Gilkes emailed Walker’s county staff: “Scott is down at the scene receiving briefing and should be attached at the hip with Sheriff Clarke.” Gilkes added that “information is the key to Scott dealing with this issue. His response will be the focal point of everything.”¹³ The same day, Walker aide Timothy Russell emailed campaign and county staff floating the theory that a car in a nearby parking space might have jarred the panel loose. Advance Cast Stone’s defense later adopted a version of that theory at trial.¹⁴

The email that drew the most attention came from Gilkes that evening. Writing to county staffer Kelly Rindfleisch under the subject line “O’Donnell,” he directed: “Keep on top of Sue Black, Kreklow, Archer and all staff to make sure there is not a paper anywhere that details a problem at all.”¹² It surfaced publicly at Rindfleisch’s October 2012 sentencing on an unrelated misconduct-in-office conviction. Advance Cast Stone’s attorneys later tried to use the directive to argue that county documents, including a possible written change order approving the altered installation method, may have been destroyed. Rindfleisch’s attorney said his “best recollection” was that she did not destroy county documents or instruct anyone else to do so.¹⁵

When political opponents and the Democratic Party filed open-records requests about the garage’s condition, Walker’s fiscal aide Cindy Archer wrote that “my sense from Keith is that we should be operating one step above ignoring them.” Walker’s county chief of staff, Tom Nardelli, pushed back, writing to Walker and his aides that records requests “will be handled as they have always been handled: timely, courteously and with the detail Corporation Counsel requires.”¹⁴ Walker characterized the coordination as an effort to release accurate information rather than let opponents “hijack the issue.” In a draft statement dated July 20, 2010, he wrote: “It is disgusting that anyone would use a tragedy for such blatant political purposes.”¹³ Walker himself was never charged in the John Doe investigation.

One boundary worth noting: while the engineering studies traced the collapse to original construction defects, not deferred maintenance, Walker publicly emphasized that finding.³ The jury’s 2% fault allocation to Milwaukee County reflected the county’s limited role compared with the installer’s concealed defects.

Repairs and the Garage Today

After the year-long investigation, Milwaukee County carried out a $5.4 million overhaul that removed all 70 precast concrete panels and repaired the underlying structure. The garage reopened in mid-2011.⁴¹⁶ In December 2017, the Milwaukee Art Museum agreed to take ownership of the O’Donnell Park structures and the garage beneath the nine-acre rooftop park, assuming maintenance responsibility and committing to significant improvements. Milwaukee County kept ownership of the underlying land.¹⁷

1
Courthouse News Service. 39 Million Verdict Upheld in Milwaukee Parking Garage Death
2
The Daily Reporter. O’Donnell Park Structure in Milwaukee Partially Collapses
3
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Walker Says Deferred Maintenance Played No Role in O’Donnell Accident
4
BizTimes Milwaukee. County May Seek Legal Damages for O’Donnell Panels
5
Milwaukee County Department of Audit. O’Donnell Park Audit Report
6
Courthouse News Service. Wosinski Settlement Appellate Filing
7
Wisconsin Law Journal. Findorff Settles O’Donnell Park Lawsuit
8
CBS 58 Milwaukee. Kellner Family Awarded Millions in Civil Lawsuit
9
The Daily Reporter. Court Upholds $39M Verdict in O’Donnell Park Parking Garage Death
10
Wisconsin Law Journal. Court Upholds $39M Verdict in O’Donnell Park Parking Garage Death
11
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Families in O’Donnell Case May Wait Years for Award
12
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Some John Doe Records May Be Made Public in O’Donnell Lawsuit
13
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. New Emails Show Scott Walker Played Role in O’Donnell Park News Flow
14
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. O’Donnell Park Emails Blog
15
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Probe of Scott Walker’s Aides May Factor in O’Donnell Park Death Trial
16
The Daily Reporter. What to Do With O’Donnell Park
17
Milwaukee Independent. O’Donnell Park Structures Part of County Transfer to Milwaukee Art Museum