Langdon & Emison

A Baltimore jury returned a $59.7 million verdict against Toyota after a passenger riding with his seat fully reclined slid beneath his seatbelt in a head-on collision, losing both legs above the knee -- a result the court later reduced to $16 million, which Maryland's appellate court upheld in 2003.

A Chittenden County jury returned a $43.1 million verdict against Johnson Controls, the seat manufacturer, after a Vermont woman was left quadriplegic when the single-sided recliner mechanism in her car seat collapsed during a rear-end collision she should have survived.

A Jackson County jury held Ford Motor Company liable for a defective fuel tank design after three members of a Missouri family burned to death when their F-150 pickup ruptured and ignited during a 1999 highway collision.

A 1993 federal jury awarded $11.3 million to the sons of Beverly Garner, a passenger killed when a defective fuel pump ignited an engine fire in her 1985 Chevrolet S-10 Blazer, a verdict whose admissibility fight over a former GM insider's testimony traveled all the way to a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the plaintiffs' favor.

A Cook County jury awarded locomotive engineer Christopher Cravatta $5.3 million under FELA after he slipped on oil-coated flooring and an icy step-down gap at Chicago's Union Station, suffered a disc tear requiring spinal fusion, and was permanently disqualified from railroad work.

A federal jury awarded $4.5 million to U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Aaron Eckerberg after a commercial van driver for Inter-State Studio and Publishing Co. blew a stop sign on a Missouri highway and slammed into his truck, causing a fractured thoracic vertebra and traumatic brain injury that ended his career as a combat helicopter pilot.