Bonnie Reiss

A Monmouth County jury awarded John Fiore $6.5 million in compensatory damages and $11.15 million in punitive damages after a drug-impaired Highlight Motor Freight driver caused a multivehicle crash on Route 440 in Perth Amboy that killed another motorist and left Fiore unable to work.

Kristen Dondero was 31 weeks pregnant and under the care of a maternal-fetal specialist when Hackensack University Medical Center sent her home on September 6, 2018 with decreased fetal movement and early labor symptoms. She returned two days later and learned her son had died in utero; the delivery that followed tore her uterus and ended in an emergency hysterectomy, blood transfusions, and further surgery under an induced coma. After five years of litigation marked by the hospital's sworn denials that any internal review of her care existed, and an Appellate Division ruling that those denials could support a fraudulent concealment claim, HMH Hospitals Corp. agreed on July 1, 2025 to pay Kristen and Andrew Dondero $6.8 million. The case against the obstetrician and his practice continued.

Calreather Graham was left in a vegetative state on January 2, 2008, when she went into cardiac arrest at Somerset Medical Center after a beta blocker was given following surgery. Her claims against two doctors, the hospital and the nurse who gave the drug settled immediately before trial for $2,725,000 in the aggregate. One physician, a critical care specialist, went to trial alone.

A 17-year-old Old Bridge High School student was riding in a friend's pickup on Englishtown Road in Old Bridge at about 3:50 a.m. on July 6, 2019 when an Acura traveling an estimated 105 mph hit the truck from behind. She was thrown from the pickup and died at the scene; the Acura's passenger also died, and its driver later blew a 0.193 and was sentenced to 17 years for aggravated manslaughter. Her parents' estate suit claimed two Old Bridge bars served him while visibly intoxicated, and on January 10, 2024 the bars' insurers agreed to pay $1.1 million on top of $115,000 already paid by the two drivers' auto carriers, for a total of $1,215,000.

Jennifer Collum-Glassman, a 45-year-old teacher, fractured her left ankle when she tripped leaving a Red Bank restaurant on March 25, 2017, and died of a pulmonary embolism on April 26 after ankle surgery. Her husband sued as executor of her estate. The restaurant's owners and operators, Juanito's, Inc. and KLE Properties, LLC, settled the wrongful death and survival claims before trial in September 2019.