Manhattan Jury Awards Former Cornell Student $71 Million After Driver Fell Asleep and Caused Head-On Crash
After trial: We found no reported appeal or post-trial reduction of the verdict. We could not confirm whether the judgment was finalized or collected.
Won by Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf.
On September 28, 2017, a Manhattan jury awarded Morgan Wang $71 million against Neil Sexton, the driver who fell asleep at the wheel on state Route 79 in August 2012 on the way to Cornell University. Wang, a passenger, suffered a fractured back and a spinal cord injury. The award was $5 million for past pain and suffering, $6 million for future pain and suffering and $60 million for future medical care.
What happened
On August 20, 2012, Morgan Wang was riding to Cornell University as a passenger in a Chevrolet Equinox driven by Neil Sexton, a Cornell graduate. Somewhere along state Route 79, Sexton fell asleep at the wheel. The Equinox crossed into the eastbound lane in the Town of Dryden and struck a minivan carrying three people. Myra Moran, a 94-year-old passenger in the minivan, was killed.
Wang was airlifted from the scene to SUNY Upstate hospital. She had a fractured back and an injury to her spinal cord. She was a student, a skier, a runner and a sailor, and those activities ended with the crash.
The injury changed how she lives. Wang now walks with leg braces and has no feeling in her feet. She could not finish her degree, because Cornell's hilly campus was too hard to get around while using a wheelchair. Her days are now organized around rehabilitation and pain management.
The claim rested on a single fact: Sexton fell asleep while driving, and the passenger beside him was left with a permanent injury.
Wang, a Brooklyn resident, sued Sexton in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan. Ben Rubinowitz represented her at trial. The case went before a jury of three men and three women over about three weeks.
On September 28, 2017, the jury returned a verdict of $71 million. It was divided into three parts: $5 million for the pain and suffering Wang had already endured, $6 million for the pain and suffering she will face in the future, and $60 million for her future medical care. The care award is the largest piece, and it reflects the ongoing treatment, equipment and therapy that a permanent spinal cord injury requires over a lifetime.
After the verdict, Wang, then 24, told the New York Post that her life had never been the same since the accident, and thanked the jury for its careful consideration. Rubinowitz described the award as one of the largest in the country for this type of injury.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf
All Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf proven verdicts →After a Westchester jury found Metro-North 71% at fault for the 2015 Valhalla grade-crossing disaster, a settlement exceeding $182 million resolved the claims of roughly 30 victims and their families.
After a routine lumbar epidural steroid injection left a Long Island man permanently paralyzed, Gair Gair Conason won a $60 million verdict for the client of attorney Marijo C. Adimey. It is believed to be the largest medical-malpractice award in Nassau County history.
After a methanol "rainbow" demonstration erupted into a fireball and burned 16-year-old Alonzo Yanes over more than 30 percent of his body, Gair Gair Conason won a $59.17 million verdict against the New York City Department of Education and his chemistry teacher.
Gair Gair Conason secured a $27.5 million settlement from the Diocese of Brooklyn for four boys abused by a parish religion teacher, reported as the largest individual Catholic Church sexual-abuse payout on record at the time.
Related car accident verdicts
On December 7, 2021, a Nueces County jury in Corpus Christi returned $1.04 billion in actual damages and $300 billion in exemplary damages, about $301.04 billion in total, against Beer Belly's Sports Bar and its owner for overserving a driver who killed Tamra Kay Kindred, 59, and her 16-year-old granddaughter in a 2017 crash. It was reported as the largest jury verdict ever recorded, and it was built to be symbolic: the bar had closed in 2019, Texas does not require bars to carry liquor liability insurance, and the family and its lawyers said openly that they expected to recover nothing and sought the number as a public statement against drunk driving. John Flood of Flood Trial Lawyers was lead counsel, with Sico, Hoelscher & Harris LLP as co-counsel; Craig Sico delivered the closing argument that asked jurors to decide how loudly their voice would be heard.
An Oakland County jury awarded $896.5 million to a young boy who was struck by a prototype test car during a student field trip at a Continental test track, reported as the largest verdict in Michigan history. The award is pre-appeal: post-trial motions are pending, Continental never made a settlement offer, and the amount could still be reduced.
A Bexar County jury awarded roughly $831 million to Blas Mendez Jr., a longtime Seguin ISD special education behavior specialist left partially paralyzed after his motorcycle hit wreckage left in the road by an 18-year-old drunk driver who had been served at Koozies Icehouse & Grill in New Braunfels. Todd A. Hunter of Hunter Trial Law tried the dram shop case with E. Chevo Pastrano and Ginna G. Pastrano of The Pastrano Law Firm. The award was reported as the largest verdict ever returned by a San Antonio jury, and the bar had already closed by the time it came in, so the family is not expected to collect most, if any, of it.
A Morgan & Morgan trial team won a $120 million Alachua County verdict for Jacob Rodgers, paralyzed at 20 when a Gainesville Regional Utilities driver ran a stop sign and broadsided the pickup he was riding in. After appeals and remittitur cut the judgment to $18.3 million, the case settled for $11 million, most of it paid through a Florida legislative claims bill that became law in 2025.