Diane Sammons

Nicholas Dephillips, a 21-year-old apprentice electrician, fell about 15 feet through a drop ceiling while installing wiring for a helipad atop Newark's Prudential Center in January 2019, fracturing his cervical spine and leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. He sued his employer, Mehl Electric, general contractor Phelps Construction Group, and the arena in Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex County. In September 2021, before trial, he settled with Mehl Electric and its insurance carriers for $21 million, a figure his attorney called the largest construction site accident settlement in New Jersey at the time. His claims against Phelps went to trial in 2025, where a jury apportioned Phelps 36 percent of the liability, adding to his overall recovery from the incident.

A Middlesex County jury awarded $39 million on February 1, 2019 to Hussein Agiz, who was 18 when a drag racing car struck his motorcycle inside the Heller Industrial Parks complex in Edison, costing him his right arm and right leg. Jurors had earlier found Heller 40 percent at fault for tolerating years of documented drag racing on its property. Under New Jersey law Heller owed its 40 percent share, about $15.6 million, and the case later settled on appeal for an undisclosed amount.

Patrick Sweeney, a 34-year-old computer salesman, was killed in August 2006 when the car service driving him to Newark Liberty International Airport lost control on the New Jersey Turnpike near the Route 80 interchange in Bergen County and struck a guardrail that pierced the passenger compartment. His widow, Kristin Sweeney, sued the contractor that built the guardrail, the engineering firms involved in its design and oversight, and the limousine company, arguing the guardrail had not been built to the specifications required by its design. Attorney Bruce Nagel represented the family. After a three-year fight the case settled in 2009 for a combined $9.75 million paid by four defendants, $4 million of it in a settlement with the contractor and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority. A separate, previously dismissed claim against the guardrail's end-terminal manufacturer, Trinity Highway Industries, was not part of the settlement.

A New Jersey jury awarded $6,000,000 after finding that a colorectal surgeon's failure to remove a polyp let a patient's colon cancer go undetected until it had spread to his liver. Benjamin Serico died of the cancer while the case was pending, and his wife Lucia Serico carried it to trial as executrix of his estate. While the jury was deliberating, the parties struck a high-low agreement that guaranteed the family a minimum recovery and capped the surgeon's total exposure at $1,000,000. Because the verdict exceeded that ceiling, judgment entered at $1,000,000. Both the New Jersey Appellate Division and the New Jersey Supreme Court held that the agreement controlled and that no attorney's fees could be added on top of it.