Heather Schneider

A Philadelphia jury awarded $725.5 million to former Mobil service station mechanic Paul Gill, who developed acute myeloid leukemia after years of cleaning car parts with benzene-containing gasoline and solvents, in what was reported as the largest benzene verdict in U.S. history; the court later added over $90 million in delay damages while ExxonMobil's appeal remains pending.

In 1972, an eight-year-old girl spent months in her family's Montgomery County, Maryland basement while her father applied and sanded a Georgia-Pacific joint compound during a home renovation. She developed mesothelioma decades later and died at 34, shortly after a jury awarded her and her husband $9,188,000, including $4,800,000 in non-economic damages. Georgia-Pacific appealed on causation and on whether Maryland's 1986 cap on non-economic damages limited the award. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed, and the Court of Appeals of Maryland affirmed again on June 11, 2002, holding that the cap did not apply because her exposure ended before the cap took effect.

A Philadelphia jury found Trans-Fleet Concrete, Inc. answerable for a concrete pump truck operator who forced a clogged hose clear under pressure instead of shutting the pump down, as he had done twice earlier that day. The hose whipped, struck concrete worker Hildo F. DeFranca in the head, and knocked him nine feet off a form wall into an unfinished basement at a Perkasie, Pennsylvania job site. DeFranca was knocked unconscious and sustained a mild traumatic brain injury, a T11 compression fracture and an aggravation of degenerative disc disease, and he did not return to work. In November 2013 the jury awarded him $2,000,000 and awarded his wife, Maria DeFranca, $250,000 for loss of consortium; the trial court added $63,590.62 in delay damages and entered judgment for $2,313,590.62. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania affirmed that judgment in January 2016.