Twenty years ago, lawyers with Wilkes & McHugh, P.A. started out with one small office in Tampa. Since those early days in Tampa, Wilkes & McHugh, P.A. has grown to ten offices across the country -- from Tampa Bay all the way to California.

Over the years, Wilkes & McHugh, P.A. lawyers have been hailed as "pioneers" of nursing home abuse and neglect litigation. In fact, the National Law Journal has featured Tampa-based Wilkes & McHugh P.A.'s nursing home abuse and neglect litigation practice in its "Plaintiffs' Hot List." (Please click here to view full coverage the National Law Journal's article on Wilkes & McHugh, P.A.'s nursing home abuse and neglect litigation).

Below you will find the various profiles and features that have been written about Wilkes & McHugh, P.A., our lawyers, and our experience with nursing home abuse and neglect cases.

Pair of nursing home neglect suits result in $500K verdicts
(July 5, 2007, The Legal Intelligencer)
...Philadelphia juries returned plaintiffs verdicts for about a half-million dollars each - both times within 90 minutes of beginning deliberations. Wilkes & McHugh attorneys Tammera R. Harrelson and Brian L. Strauss initiated both cases, which alleged abuse and neglect. Read More...

Two W&M attorneys named Florida Super Lawyers 2007
(June 2007, Super Lawyers Magazine)
...Super Lawyers identifies the top 5 percent of attorneys in each state, as chosen by their peers and through the independent research of Law & Politics. Read More...

Study: Policy changes have direct effect on nursing home care
(May 29, 2007, University of California San Francisco News Office)
...The majority of the nation’s elderly and disabled in nursing homes remain in situations where staffing is well below national recommendations for safe care, the study found. While no states have ideal nursing levels, those states with higher Medicaid reimbursements or higher mandated nursing levels have come closer to meeting the recommendations. Read More...

Study: Chain-owned nursing homes hurt by standardization
(May 21, 2007, University of Michigan School of Health)
...Research from the University of Michigan School of Public Health suggests that one of the strengths of a nursing home chain---the ability to standardize and perfect administrative practices throughout the chain---also can hurt patient care. Read More...

Deadly Neglect
(December 2006, Reader's Digest)
...His family didn't know the truth of his terrible demise at the Beverly Health and Rehabilitation nursing home in Frankfort until weeks after he'd been buried. Daughter Jan Richards was at a church service when a man in front of her, who drove the city's handicapped van and had transported local nursing home residents, turned around to offer his condolences. It was so sad, he said, that her father had to die "suffering like that and nothing was done for him." Read More...

Jim Wilkes receives national award
(October 2006)
...The award was given by the oldest resident advocacy group in the country; the National Citizens Coalition for Nursing Home Reform (NCCNHR) at its annual convention in Washington, D.C. this year. Read More...

Best Lawyers in America
(August 2006)
...The Best Lawyers lists, representing 80 specialties in all 50 states and Washington, DC, are compiled through an exhaustive peer-review survey in which thousands of the top lawyers in the U.S. confidentially evaluate their professional peers. Read More...


Evidence of Excellence
(July 2006, Florida Trend Magazine)
... A prestigious group, the 1,031 Legal Elite attorneys comprise 1.8 percent of the 57,968 Florida Bar members who practice in the state. Sixty-five percent of this year’s honorees are repeat winners, having been named to the Legal Elite at least once since 2004. Read More...

Man's Estate to Get $20 Million
(May 5, 2006, Lexington Herald-Leader)
...the case reaffirms that the state and families "need to be paying attention to the care, particularly when it comes to staffing of front-line caregivers." Read More...

Consumer Attorneys of California Name Robert C. Chavez and Anthony C. Lanzone as Consumer Attorneys of the Year Award Finalists
(November 12, 2005, Consumer Attorneys of California)
...This verdict will make both the defendants and other nursing homes stand up and take notice, hopefully encouraging them to follow the law on staffing and care so that this type of tragedy can be avoided. Read More...

Aggressive Firms Make a Niche of Nursing Home Negligence Suits
(September 6, 2004, NJ Law Journal) By Charles Toutant
There's also foreign competition. Wilkes & McHugh, a Florida firm known for some large verdicts in nursing home litigation, has set its sights on New Jersey. Read More...

Pioneer Law Firm
(August 16, 2004, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette) By Leroy Donald
"Groundbreaking litigation developed in the 1980s and 1990s by the partners at Wilkes & McHugh has carved out a niche and a name for itself. ...It has pioneered use of... residents’ rights law to sue for neglect, as a separate cause of action beyond simple negligence." Read More...

Firm Recognized for Successful Suits Against Nursing Homes
(August 9, 2004, Mississippi Bar Journal) By Lynne Jeter
Last month, the National Law Journal listed Wilkes & McHugh, P.A., a pioneer in filing nursing home abuse and neglect lawsuits, as one of the top 20 plaintiff’s firms in the nation, primarily because of the $23.5 million in Mississippi courtroom verdicts in the last two years. Read More...

Hot Lawyers
(August 5, 2004, Arkansas Times)
Wilkes & McHugh’s selection was based in part on work done in Arkansas. The firm, which specializes in nursing homes, won a $78 million verdict in 2001 against Advocat, a national chain with a nursing home in Mena. Read More...

Monday Morning Briefs - Wilkes & McHugh
(August 2, 2004, Talk Business Online)
A Journal profile of Wilkes & McHugh, which is known for its representation of nursing home residents, shows that the firm earned a total of $64 million in verdicts in the past two years with 60 attorneys in seven states, including 12 attorneys in its Little Rock office. Read More...

Law Publication Honors SP Office of National Law Firm
(July 31, 2004, Daily Breeze) By Paul Clinton
The firm has been so successful securing high-dollar verdicts and settlements because of its aggressive investigative methods... Read More...

Little Rock Law Firm Named Top 20 in the Nation
(July 30, 2004, The Daily Record, AR)
In one of three accompanying features, the Journal profiles Wilkes & McHugh, P.A.. As a law firm known for its advocacy for nursing home residents. Read More...

Journal Names Wilkes & McHugh, P.A. Among Nation's Top 20
(July 29, 2004, Arkansas Business Journal)
“Its success has been noticed by other firms, which have followed its lead.” Read More...

Wilkes & McHugh, P.A. Named Among Top 20 Firms
(July 26, 2004, Hattiesburg American)
"It’s great to be honored in this way, but it’s really about protecting this country’s elderly and making sure their quality of life is not compromised." Read More...

Wilkes & McHugh, P.A. Makes Top 20
(July 26, 2004, Memphis Business Journal)
Wilkes & McHugh is featured in the just-released National Law Journal’s "Plaintiff’s Hot List" as one of the 20 firms that have done "exemplary" work during the past year. Read More...

Carving Out a Lucrative Niche
(July 26, 2004, National Law Journal) By Dee McAree
The trend started when firms like Tampa, Fla.'s Wilkes & McHugh began taking on for-profit nursing homes in abuse and neglect cases and winning big verdicts. Read More...

Law Firm's Success Against Nursing Homes Has a Price
(July 24, 2004, St. Petersburg Times) By Scott Barancik
Clients - and trial lawyer peers - call it a heaven-sent bunch that has scared nursing homes into providing better care. Read More...

Reforms Appear to Have Curtailed Nursing Home Suits, Study Shows
(January 19, 2004, Tampa Tribune) By Mike Salinero
Sweeping nursing home reforms passed in 2001 appear to have reduced the number of lawsuits being filed against Florida elder-care facilities. That's the conclusion drawn by Wilkes & McHugh, a Tampa-based law firm prominent in the nursing home field, after looking at lawsuit data in 32 Florida counties. Read More...

Wilkes & McHugh Test New Practice Area in Arkansas
(July 7, 2003, Arkansas Business Journal) By Gwen Mortiz
Andy McCumber of Tampa, Fla., has faced the Wilkes & McHugh law firm as much as any lawyer in the firm's home state, and he thought he knew the founder Jim Wilkes — business plan pretty well. Read More...

Punitive Damage
(May 16, 2003, Arkansas Times) By Doug Smith
Naturally enough, Reddick repeats arguments made by James Wilkes, a founder of W&M, that "Abuse and fraud are rampant throughout the for-profit nursing home industry," that the for-profit system hasn't worked and should be replaced with something else. But what? Read More...

Reluctant Lawyers Find Themselves Specializing in Nursing Home Defense
(June 10, 2002, Arkansas Business Journal) By Gwen Moritz
“The spark that fired the explosion” of nursing home defense, [Roger] Glasgow said, was the arrival in Arkansas of Wilkes & McHugh. It is a Tampa, Fla., firm whose founding partner, Jim Wilkes, pioneered a highly successful model for negligence cases against nursing homes and an aggressive advertising campaign for locating potential plaintiffs. Other firms, from inside and outside the state, have followed Wilkes & McHugh’s lead. Read More...

Big Money in Mena
(December 7, 2001, Arkansas Times) By Doug Smith
Waiting with [Danny] Thrailkill were Brian Reddick of Little Rock and Bennie Lazzara of Tampa, Fla. The three represented the sons of the late Mrs. Sauer in a lawsuit against the Mena nursing home where she'd been a patient, and against the home's out-of-state corporate owners. The jury was out less than three hours. After two, Lazzara announced, "They're on our time now." Were they ever. On June 22, the jury returned a $78,425,000 verdict for the plaintiffs, the largest judgment in Arkansas history. Read More...

Angel or Anti-Christ?
(December 7, 2001, Arkansas Times) By Doug Smith
Angel or Anti-Christ? Neither, really. Jim Wilkes is just a lawyer who has found a way to achieve great financial reward through use of the justice system. Wilkes’ way is to sue nursing homes, which gives him an angelic cast in the eyes of plaintiffs and makes him rather a demon to defendants. Pictures of Wilkes are shown at nursing home conventions; Know your enemy. Read More...

Predatory Crusaders
(November 2001, British Student Medical Journal) By Andrew Papanikitas
With highway billboards and a multistate team of about 50 lawyers, Jim Wilkes and Tim McHugh own the Wilkes and McHugh law firm. The firm has in the last decade exploded out of Florida in pursuit of plaintiffs' complaints against nursing homes. The nursing home industry has described Jim Wilkes as evil, Beelzebub, and the antichrist. The director of the Alabama Nursing Home Association called him "a migratory predator." Read More...

Florida Law Firm Targets Nursing Homes
(August 17, 2001, The Meridian Star) By Suzanne Monk
Jim Wilkes is a founding partner of Wilkes & McHugh, headquartered in Tampa, Fla. The firm specializes in nursing home abuse cases, with clients in 12 states and multi-million dollar awards over the last decade in Florida, Arkansas and California. The firm made history in Arkansas in June with a record $78.43 million award involving a nursing home patient who died of dehydration. Read More...

Wilkes & McHugh: The Law Firm Nursing Homes Love to Hate
(August 2001, Mississippi Medical News) By Sharon H. Fitzgerald
With an office in Memphis, Tenn., plans for an office soon in Jackson, Miss., and offices in Florida, Texas, Arkansas and California, the law firm of Wilkes & McHugh is fanning out, much to the chagrin of the nursing-home industry in those states and others. Wilkes & McHugh sues nursing homes — and is very good at it. Read More...

Nursing Homes Brace for Legal Assault
(June 15, 2001, Memphis Business Journal) By Scott Shepard
Tennessee's nursing homes are in the cross-hairs of a Florida law firm that has single-handedly created a new industry: personal injury lawsuits against nursing homes. Starting in Florida and then advancing through Alabama, Texas, Arkansas and now Tennessee and California, the Tampa-based firm of Wilkes & McHugh has been compared by critics to the Borg, a sci-fi race that consumes everything in its path and then moves on. Read More...

The Spoilers
(June 2001, Florida Trend Magazine) By Cynthia Barnett
Presenting facts on bedsores and soiled sheets, malnutrition, falls and worse, Wilkes and his Tampa law firm, Wilkes & McHugh, have gotten rich suing nursing homes for neglect. The firm, which collects an average of 40% of damages, won four of the biggest verdicts ever reached against Florida homes, including $15 million against Tampa's Brian Center for allowing a Korean War veteran to die of starvation and $20 million against St. Petersburg's Colonial Care Center for not feeding a man for a month and not treating his wounds, which developed gangrene. Read More...

Nursing Home Crisis
(May 11, 2001, Religion and Ethics Newsweekly) By Lucky Serverson
SEVERSON: Jim Wilkes is not prone to understatement, but he has made a living, actually, he's made a fortune, taking Florida nursing homes to court and winning.

WILKES: We have proven over and over and over and over again conditions that are criminal. And I've got a thousand cases pending like that right now. Read More...

Juries Treat Nursing Home Industry with Multimillion-Dollar Verdicts
(April 23, 2001, The National Law Journal) By Margaret Cronin Fisk
In the early 1990s, to increase chances of recovery, Wilkes pioneered suits against nursing homes for violating Florida's residents' rights law…

Before then, says Wilkes, "the perception was that it was cheaper to abuse them." According to Steven Vancore, a spokesman for Wilkes' firm, 36 states now have some form of residents' rights laws. Residents' rights are also established under federal law, says Vancore. Read More...

Angels of Death
(January 1, 2001, Law.com) By Adam Miller
On the other side were Jim Wilkes and Tim McHugh, the founding partners of Tampa-based Wilkes & McHugh, the state leader in suing nursing homes for abuse and neglect of residents. Read More...

Lawyer Crusades for Nursing Home Reform
(August 16, 2000, Birmingham Post-Herald) By Steve Reeves
Jim Wilkes doesn't mince words when it comes to expressing his contempt for the nursing home industry. "There is no such thing as a good nursing home, just as there was never such a thing as a good orphanage," the 49-year-old lawyer and Tampa, Fla., native said. "How many orphanages do you see around these days?" Read More...

Law Firm Plans Entry into Mississippi Nursing Home Litigation
(August 14, 2000, Mississippi Business Journal) By Elizabeth Kirkland
Jim Wilkes, who founded Wilkes & McHugh with his partner and best friend, Tim McHugh, in 1984 [sic], is no stranger to controversy. Since he and McHugh founded the firm, they have had landmark verdicts in the area of nursing home abuse and are widely regarded as pioneers in the field. Lawyers at one time had been hesitant to represent victims of abuse because they were seen as having little or no economic “value” in society, but Wilkes helped to change that. Read More...

Making Them Pay. Attorney Jim Wilkes Takes Neglectful Nursing Homes to Court for Their Carelessness
(November 11, 1999, People Magazine) By Nick Charles and Don Sider
Six years later, while handling primarily divorce and minor liability cases, he received a grim reminder of his grandmother's plight when an elderly woman walked into his Tampa, Fla., office with a disturbing story about her 89-year old sister, who had died in a nursing home, her body pocked with bedsores. The woman had been referred to Wilkes by an attorney who didn't think she had a big-money claim. "He told her, 'There's no value to this case,'" recalls Wilkes. "'But I know this crazy guy…'" Read More...

Wild, Wild Wilkes: Mr. Nursing Home Lawsuit
(August 29, 1999, St. Petersburg Times) By Geoff Dougherty
James Wilkes is either the greatest crusader for better care of the elderly or a greedy lawyer who makes nursing homes more expensive for everybody. Or a little of both. Read More...

Avenging Angel
(August 1, 1998, Florida Living Magazine) By Jeremy Clark
Wilkes has become a minor celebrity for his campaign against abuse and neglect at the hands of large nursing home corporations. Big-city newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, have chronicled his progress as he wrangles multimillion dollar settlements from unscrupulous companies. Read More...

Lawyer Hits Pay Dirt in Attacks On Nursing-Home Negligence
(June 26, 1996, Wall Street Journal) By Peter Mitchell
"Wilkes is the guru of nursing home cases," says T. Patrick Ford, a Miami lawyer increasingly specializing in patient-rights cases. "People are waking up, seeing there's money in this thing, and they're getting into it." Read More...