The $227 Million Building Collapse Settlement and Mariya Plekan's $95.6 Million Award
Won by Kline & Specter, PC.
After an unbraced brick wall toppled during a 2013 Center City demolition and crushed a Salvation Army store, Kline & Specter's Andrew J. Stern secured a $95.6 million award for survivor Mariya Plekan, the largest individual share of a record $227 million settlement.
What happened
On the morning of June 5, 2013, a four-story building was being torn down at 22nd and Market Streets in Center City Philadelphia, next to a one-story Salvation Army thrift store that was open for business. The demolition crew left a tall brick wall standing without bracing. It gave way and fell onto the crowded store, burying shoppers and workers under tons of debris. Six people were killed at the scene, a seventh died later, and roughly a dozen others were hurt.
Mariya Plekan, then 52, a Ukrainian immigrant and a regular at the store, was among those trapped. Rescuers did not reach her for about 13 hours. Her injuries were among the worst any survivor faced. Surgeons had to remove the lower half of her body at the hips. She lived through kidney failure and lung damage, came through roughly 30 operations, and spent months on a respirator that left her unable to speak. She would need round-the-clock medical care for the rest of her life.
The civil case went to trial in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court and ran 17 weeks. Lawyers for the injured and the families of the dead argued that the property owner, New York real estate investor Richard Basciano, his company STB Investments, and the Salvation Army shared the blame for letting an unsafe demolition proceed alongside an occupied store. Andrew J. Stern of Kline & Specter represented Plekan and told the jury her future medical costs alone could reach $50 million.
In February 2017, before the jury returned a verdict, the defendants agreed to resolve every claim for a combined $227 million. That figure was reported as the largest personal injury settlement in Pennsylvania court history. It was a single fund meant to cover all 19 people killed or injured in the collapse.
Because one pool of money had to be split among many claimants, the parties asked arbitrator Jerry P. Roscoe to decide each person's share. In May 2017, Roscoe assigned $95.6 million to Plekan, by far the largest individual amount. Stern described it as the highest recovery ever for an injured person in the state.
The award was not later reduced, remitted, or capped. The defendants had committed to paying the full $227 million before the allocation, so Plekan's $95.6 million share stood as Roscoe set it.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Kline & Specter, PC
All Kline & Specter, PC proven verdicts →As chair of the plaintiffs' negotiating committee and Liaison Counsel in the Vioxx multidistrict litigation, Russ Herman directed the negotiations that produced a $4.85 billion settlement with Merck resolving approximately 45,000 to 50,000 personal-injury claims.
A Philadelphia jury found that Monsanto failed to warn that Roundup could cause cancer and awarded John McKivison $2.25 billion. The trial judge later reduced the award to $400 million.
After Amtrak Train 188 derailed in Philadelphia in May 2015, killing eight and injuring more than 200, Kline & Specter's Thomas R. Kline led the plaintiffs' negotiations that produced a $265 million settlement fund for the victims.
A Philadelphia jury found the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania liable for the brain injury a newborn suffered when staff delayed a cesarean section, a $182.7 million verdict that grew to a molded judgment of about $207.6 million, the largest medical malpractice award in Pennsylvania history. Kline & Specter argued and won the appeal, where the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed the full $207.6 million judgment in July 2025.
Related premises liability verdicts
Anapol Weiss shareholder Kristen Gibbons Feden helped secure $1.6 billion in default verdicts for 104 women sexually abused as children by former Long Island pediatrician Stuart Copperman, one of the largest cumulative civil awards against a single individual in U.S. history.
A Dallas jury awarded $1.1 billion against a trust fund heir who beat a 2-year-old into a permanent vegetative state in 2021, a verdict the firm calls the largest child-assault award in U.S. history.
A Clayton County jury awarded $1 billion to a woman who was raped at age 14 by an armed security guard her employer hired without verifying he was licensed to carry a weapon.
Joseph Bruno and Bruno & Bruno served as lead plaintiffs' counsel in a landmark class action brought by more than 8,000 Gentilly residents exposed to a butadiene tank-car fire in 1987, securing a jury verdict that included $2.5 billion in punitive damages against CSX Transportation alone, later reduced to $850 million on appeal and affirmed by Louisiana's Fourth Circuit.