Peter DePaolis

Charles Kapar, a U.S. aid agency auditor, was beaten and tortured during the December 1984 hijacking of a Kuwait Airways jet to Tehran. In September 2004 the federal court in Washington entered a $13.5 million default judgment against Iran and its Ministry of Information and Security under the state-sponsored terrorism exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Iran never appeared. In 2015 the court authorized attachment of Iranian property to collect the unpaid balance.

A District of Columbia jury awarded $2 million to a hardware store customer who suffered a subdural hematoma and emergency brain surgery after a Hechinger employee assaulted him, and the D.C. Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict in full.

A Washington, D.C. jury awarded $3.05 million against a pediatrician who failed to send a feverish child for emergency care before an invasive Group A strep infection and toxic shock cost him both legs, and the trial court entered a net judgment of $1,525,000 after the hospital's pro rata settlement credit.

The family of a construction superintendent fatally burned when an underground steam pipe ruptured in downtown Washington in 2004 settled their wrongful death case confidentially with the federal government, D.C. Water, and the contractors named in the suit.