Patrick McTernan

After a Chevron-USA tank-farm explosion at Honolulu Harbor burned two Shell Oil employees who later died of their injuries, a Hawaii Circuit Court jury awarded their families a combined $27.7 million in January 1983, then the largest civil verdict in state history.

A federal bench trial awarded $24.7 million to a Navy family after Tripler Army Medical Center physicians failed to administer IV antibiotics for roughly 48 hours following a post-delivery infection, leaving the patient with permanent kidney failure.

A federal judge awarded $16.5 million to the family of a newborn who suffered permanent brain damage after an Army pediatrician at Tripler Army Medical Center administered carbon dioxide instead of oxygen for 42 minutes following his birth. It was the largest single personal-injury judgment for an individual in Hawaii history at the time.

The City and County of Honolulu agreed in October 2021 to pay $10 million to settle a wrongful-death claim brought by the family of cardiothoracic anesthesiologist William Travis Lau, who was struck and killed on a Kakaako sidewalk when a drunk driver fleeing an HPD high-speed pursuit veered off Ala Moana Boulevard in January 2019.

In August 2007, U.S. District Judge David Ezra found Tripler Army Medical Center negligent in monitoring a hospitalized infant whose breathing failed in May 2004, leaving him with severe, permanent brain damage. After a nonjury trial under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the court entered judgment of more than $9.4 million for the boy and his parents. Attorney L. Richard Fried, Jr. represented the family.