$27 Million Settlement for Family of George Floyd, Announced as the Largest of Its Kind
Won by Ben Crump Law (lead counsel), Romanucci & Blandin (co-counsel) and Stewart Miller Simmons Trial Attorneys (co-counsel).
Ben Crump, with co-counsel Antonio Romanucci and L. Chris Stewart, negotiated a $27 million settlement between the family of George Floyd and the City of Minneapolis, announced by the family's lawyers as the largest pretrial settlement of a civil rights wrongful-death claim in American history. The city council approved the payment unanimously in March 2021, while jury selection in Derek Chauvin's murder trial was underway blocks away.
What happened
On May 25, 2020, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes outside a convenience store at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue while Floyd, handcuffed and face-down on the pavement, repeatedly said he could not breathe. Bystander video of his death circulated worldwide within hours and set off the largest wave of protests over policing in modern American history.
That July, Floyd's family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in the District of Minnesota against the City of Minneapolis and the four officers involved. The complaint went beyond the actions of a single officer, alleging that the city's training, supervision, and disciplinary practices had allowed a culture of excessive force to persist. Ben Crump led the family's legal team, joined by Antonio Romanucci of Chicago's Romanucci & Blandin and Atlanta civil rights attorney L. Chris Stewart, among other co-counsel.
The case never reached a jury. On March 12, 2021, as jury selection was underway in Chauvin's state murder trial just blocks from where the settlement was announced, the Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously to pay the Floyd family $27 million. The family's attorneys described it as the largest pretrial settlement ever reached in a civil rights wrongful-death case in the United States, and it exceeded the city's previous record police-misconduct payout many times over.
The agreement carried a community component as well: $500,000 of the settlement was earmarked for the neighborhood business district at 38th and Chicago, the intersection where Floyd died, which had become a memorial site known as George Floyd Square. The family and its lawyers framed the settlement as one piece of a broader push for police reform in Minneapolis, alongside the policy changes the city had begun adopting after Floyd's death.
The civil resolution preceded the criminal one. The following month, Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter and was later sentenced to 22 and a half years in state prison; he and the other three officers also faced federal civil rights convictions or pleas. For Crump, the settlement cemented his standing as the attorney families turn to in the country's most consequential police-violence cases, and it set a financial benchmark that subsequent police-misconduct settlements would be measured against.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.NPR: Minneapolis Reaches $27 Million Settlement With Family Of George Floyd (March 2021)·Archived copy
- 2.CBS News: Minneapolis approves "historic" $27 million settlement with George Floyd's family·Archived copy
- 3.Star Tribune: Minneapolis to pay record $27 million to settle lawsuit with George Floyd's family·Archived copy
- 4.WGN Radio 720: George Floyd family attorney Antonio Romanucci discusses $27 million settlement (Mar. 2021)·Archived copy
- 5.Washington Informer: George Floyd's family reaches $27M settlement with Minneapolis in wrongful-death suit (Mar. 2021)·Archived copy
- 6.Top Class Actions: $27M settlement reached in George Floyd civil rights lawsuit (Mar. 2021)·Archived copy
- 7.Law360: Inside look at Floyd civil case attorneys, naming Stewart and Miller of Stewart Trial Attorneys
- 8.Minnesota Reformer: Minneapolis reaches historic $27 million settlement with George Floyd's family·Archived copy
More proven verdicts from Ben Crump Law
All Ben Crump Law proven verdicts →Lewis Butler, a security guard, was shot eight times and killed in November 2023 during an armed robbery at an internet cafe in Havana, Florida. The cafe's operators had not reported a robbery three weeks earlier in which the gun used against him was stolen. In December 2025 a Gadsden County jury awarded his widow $779,389,024, including $550 million for pain and suffering and $225 million for loss of companionship.
A Leon County jury awarded $411,726,608 to Duane Washington, a career Army sergeant left partially paralyzed in a 45-vehicle pileup on Interstate 10 near Tallahassee, in the Second Judicial Circuit's first virtual jury trial. Ben Crump tried the damages case with co-counsel Robert Cox. Liability was entered by default after defendant Top Auto Express stopped responding in the litigation, its lawyer withdrew months before trial, the one-truck Pembroke Pines carrier sat out the Zoom trial undefended, and industry observers called the record number essentially uncollectable beyond the roughly $1 million in insurance that was offered and rejected before trial.
Ben Crump, with Connecticut co-counsel Louis Rubano and R.J. Weber, secured a $45 million settlement from the City of New Haven for Richard "Randy" Cox, who was left paralyzed from the chest down after being thrown headfirst into the wall of a police transport van while handcuffed. At announcement it was described as the largest settlement ever reached in a U.S. police-misconduct case, surpassing the George Floyd settlement.
Charles Payne Sr., 75, died after an HPD patrol car driven by Officer Christopher Cabrera struck his vehicle on North Shepherd Drive in Houston on December 26, 2021. A federal jury found in November 2025 that the City of Houston was deliberately indifferent in adopting an inadequate policy that let officers drive recklessly. It awarded $13 million to his family. The city's new-trial motion was denied and its appeal to the Fifth Circuit is pending.
Related civil rights verdicts
An Essex County jury awarded $165.97 million against the State of New Jersey and its Division of Youth and Family Services for failing to remove an infant from his home despite his grandmother's abuse report, a verdict reported as the largest in state personal injury history. The trial judge cut it to $102.6 million on remittitur, and in April 2017 the Appellate Division reversed the judgment entirely on qualified immunity grounds under the Tort Claims Act. The family collected nothing from the State.
On December 14, 2019 Emily Gaines, an 18-year-old Moore High School senior, was driving to take the ACT when Sgt. Kyle Lloyd of the Moore Police Department, off duty and rushing a key to another officer's patrol car for a department event, hit her broadside at 95 to 100 mph in a 50 zone. She died at the scene. On April 1, 2026 a federal jury returned $126,000,000. The court entered $90,000,000 against Lloyd, who is in prison, and cut the $36,000,000 against the City to $125,000 under Oklahoma's Governmental Tort Claims Act.
The Popham Law Firm secured a $57 million settlement on behalf of more than 1,700 Sprint employees who alleged the company's automated performance system unlawfully targeted workers over 40 during a series of mass layoffs, at the time the largest ADEA class settlement in the District of Kansas.
Terral Ellis II, 26, walked into the Ottawa County Jail voluntarily on an outstanding warrant. He developed bronchopneumonia and spent twelve days asking for medical care for seizures, sweating and pain. Jail video captured staff and the jail nurse mocking him. He died of septic shock on October 22, 2015.