The Icebreaker

As a younger attorney, Daniel Giroux would rattle his boss by sending fake emails from the defense lawyer, reading “Just want you to know that we found evidence that is going to vindicate our doctors, so we’re withdrawing our offer.” Other times, he would place made-up discovery on the senior attorney’s desk, just to watch him squirm. 

“Through humor, in the form of pranks or icebreakers, I’d reduce the temperature in the room,” says Giroux, who now handles medical malpractice and other personal injury matters and mediation for plaintiffs at Dugan & Giroux in Wichita, Kansas. “I’ve matured a lot since those days, but my sense of humor … it comes out in pretty much everything I do in life—not just the law firm.

“I’m in my 50s. But if you ask my wife, she’ll tell you that I act like a 13-year-old.”

Behind the playfulness, however, lies a staunch commitment to fighting for those who’ve been wronged, injured or killed by the negligence of others. A former district attorney, Giroux is regarded as one of the state’s best mediators, frequently negotiating multimillion-dollar settlements in complex disputes.

Building strong client relationships is central to Giroux’s practice, and to who he is as a person. “I’m very accessible,” he says. “Everyone has my cell number, and I talk to them even after the case is done. They’re part of the family, so to speak.”

Steve Torline, a litigator at Kuckelman Torline Kirkland in Overland Park, Kansas, met Giroux two decades ago while defending a medical malpractice case that Giroux took over for an attorney who died unexpectedly. “I saw firsthand how Dan did a great job preparing his case,” says Torline, who now occasionally partners with Giroux on the plaintiff side. “He has great instincts and a fantastic grasp of medicine. 

“More importantly, he is a fantastic human being that others want to be around. … He makes each client his most important, and he doesn’t cut corners. Opposing counsel, experts, and judges all like and respect him.”

The son of a college president and an English teacher, Giroux grew up in a close-knit—and large—Wichita family. His 10 siblings, he says, “were my best friends, so I didn’t have to go out and find a whole lot of friends.” Soccer was his chosen sport, but he loved history: American, presidential, World War II. And he admired his dad’s involvement in the community and perseverance at a time when many small liberal arts colleges around the country were closing or cutting programs.

By age 12, Giroux knew he wanted to be an attorney. “My parents had friends that were lawyers, and for some reason the whole idea of being an advocate for somebody in a courtroom always just resonated with me,” he says.

After earning his J.D. from Creighton University School of Law in Omaha in 1999, Giroux was hired as assistant district attorney for the 18th Judicial District in Sedgwick County, Kansas. For the next four years, he worked cases in the general, violent and sex crimes divisions. “I was drawn in that direction because I’d be instantly involved in court cases,” he says. “I knew it would be the quickest way to get in the courtroom—the quickest way to meet judges and other lawyers in the bar.”

Despite his sociable personality, he was nervous. “I had a lot of anxiety. I think I had probably 20 jury trials under my belt before I actually felt comfortable,” says Giroux. “I can have a conversation with anybody, but in a courtroom, with a jury sitting there, it took a little while for me to warm up and get used to the idea and be myself.”

Overcoming his jitters, Giroux successfully prosecuted a number of cases, including one on behalf of a 9-year-old girl whose stepfather repeatedly molested her while the mother was at work. Although the child was able to describe, in graphic detail, “things you wouldn’t know about unless you experienced them,” Giroux worried as the jury deliberated on a Friday afternoon. “I’m always worried about those cases. A lot of times, it’s just circumstantial evidence—there’s no DNA,” he says. “A lot of times, it’s the kid’s word versus the criminal defendant’s word.”

Two hours later, the jurors delivered a guilty verdict of aggravated indecent liberties with a child, and the man was sentenced to 25 years behind bars.

Giroux wasn’t destined to stay at the DA’s office long. One Monday in 2003, jury selection was underway on a sexual assault case when Giroux’s boss, prosecutor Nola Foulston, slipped into the courtroom to watch. He wondered if he was in trouble, especially when she asked him to come to her office on his lunch break. 

Instead, Giroux learned that Brad Prochaska, of the Wichita medical malpractice firm Prochaska, Howell & Prochaska, had seen him at trial and was interested in hiring him. “Honestly, I didn’t know the difference between what the plaintiff did and the defense did in the civil world, because I’d always been in the criminal world,” Giroux says. 

Nevertheless, he met with Prochaska that evening and accepted the job—with the reassurance that Foulston had left the door open for him to come back if it didn’t work out.

Giroux hit the ground running, immersing himself in the firm’s up-to-date medical library, and shouldering more than 20 cases off the bat. That initial year he tried three of them. In the first, he represented an older woman who’d gone to the hospital after dislocating her hip. While manually realigning it, the resident physician damaged the sciatic nerve, causing permanent foot drop. 

At that point, Giroux had honed his skills as a litigator; he was comfortable asking tough questions at trial and knew that jurors were, contrary to what he’d initially assumed, more interested in what the witnesses had to say than how he chose his own words. And he’d built some solid relationships with judges during his time at the DA’s office. But this was different. “I was really nervous, and I was really scared,” he says. “It was my first go-round in civil court, and I felt like a fish out of water. Just to get through that was extremely difficult.”

That trial ended in a defense verdict; and his second was resolved after a hung jury. But by the third one, a misdiagnosed colon cancer case, Giroux was winning.

In 2015, drained by the heavy load of medical malpractice cases, Giroux and estate planning attorney Paul Dugan co-founded their own firm—giving Giroux the flexibility to take on car accidents, slips-and-falls, and product liability matters.

In the decade since, he has wrangled a number of high-dollar wins. But the one he considers most meaningful is a medical malpractice case he took on with another firm: a $4.9 million settlement in 2021 for the family of a 5-year-old left permanently disabled after a tragic misdiagnosis. The boy was attending church with his family on a Sunday evening when a severe headache made him cry out in pain. At the local ER, he showed abnormal vital signs and his eyes rolled back into his head. 

The hospital staff diagnosed him with strep and sent him home. But his condition worsened, and the parents took him to a different hospital early the next morning, where he received the same assessment and was admitted for treatment for dehydration. When he coded, medical personnel were able to resuscitate him, but a CT scan showed a large tumor in his brain; he had suffered a massive stroke that paralyzed his right side. “Had they properly diagnosed him, either at the first hospital or at the beginning of the second hospitalization, they could’ve prevented the stroke,” says Giroux. 

More than 50 depositions, approximately 750 federal court filings, and three years later, Giroux brokered the settlement. The “watershed moment,” he says, came when a note written by one of the health care providers was presented to the court, revealing that he’d done a cut-and-paste from another doctor’s report rather than make a fresh diagnosis. “I was able to keep my composure, but I could tell that the defense lawyers knew it, too,” Grioux says. “You could just see changes in body language.”

As always, Giroux has stayed in touch with the family. While the boy can barely sit up, the settlement has helped pay for his medical care.

Over the past five years, Giroux has increasingly leaned into mediation—starting when an attorney-friend asked him to mediate a medical malpractice case, noting, “You’ve got good relationships with everybody, on both sides of the aisle.”

“I did it, I loved it, and got hooked,” Giroux says. “There’s not an emotional attachment to the cases. And being able to work through disputes, learn new areas of the law, meet new people—it’s really exciting.”

He now spends half his time mediating cases, and predicts that percentage will grow substantially in the next few years. Giroux’s ability to articulate ideas—and listen with intent—undoubtedly keeps him on the go-to list. “Being raised in a big family, you have to be able to talk and socialize with people,” he says, noting that he feeds off the energy of others. “You had to be a peacemaker a lot, because somebody’s always at each other’s throat.”

Humor helps, too. Occasionally, one of his seven brothers will call the firm pretending to be a new client. “I’m good with icebreakers and getting people to open up during mediation. Some of the skills are natural, but others I’ve been able to cultivate along the way.”

Like his parents, Giroux is very involved in the community, serving as chair of StepStone, a local nonprofit and food pantry that provides transitional housing for victims of domestic violence. He is also the co-director of the Wichita Gladiator Dash, a 5K obstacle race he and a friend created 13 years ago to benefit Newman University, Giroux’s undergrad alma mater. The race had 1,500 participants in 2025, and now benefits two local charities: Child Advocacy Center of Sedgwick County, and the Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation.

In 2016, Giroux embarked on a different kind of run—to unseat Mike Pompeo, who had served in the U.S. House of Representatives for Kansas’ 4th District since 2011. “I got blown out of the water,” Giroux says. “It was a very difficult challenge as a Democrat: I live in a predominantly red district, and Kansas is pretty red. But it was a very enriching experience, and I think I became a better person, just being on the campaign trail and doing the parades and town halls and speeches.”

He isn’t sure if he’ll take another stab at politics, but in the meantime Giroux is fighting for clients at Dugan & Giroux Law, hitting the gym five days a week, and spending time with his four children and wife, Christine. The couple holds a tournament of rotating games every Saturday night with friends.

“We like to keep it light and keep it fun,” he says. “We’re in our 50s. How immature is that?”