$160.5 Million Verdict, Then a Confidential Settlement, for a Brain Injury at the Cosmopolitan Nightclub
After trial: Settled after the verdict: the jury returned $160.5 million in compensatory damages in April 2017, and the case settled on undisclosed terms that week while the jury was deliberating punitive damages. The settlement replaced the verdict, so what was paid is not public.
Won by Panish Shea Ravipudi LLP.
A Las Vegas jury awarded hedge fund manager David Moradi $160.5 million after Cosmopolitan security personnel beat him at the Marquee nightclub and left him with a traumatic brain injury, and a confidential settlement followed during deliberations on punitive damages.
What happened
In April 2012, David Moradi, a New York hedge fund manager, was a guest at the Marquee nightclub inside The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. He had run up and paid a bill of more than $10,000 that night. According to his lawsuit, a club manager and security officers then forced him into a back room and demanded his identification and credit card. When the encounter escalated, they shoved him to the floor, repeatedly struck him, and pressed his head into the concrete.
Moradi managed a fund of roughly $1 billion and earned about $11 million a year. A Las Vegas neurosurgeon diagnosed him with a traumatic brain injury. In the months that followed he described headaches, disorientation, trouble concentrating, difficulty walking, and anxiety, problems that struck at the high-pressure work his income depended on.
Moradi filed suit in 2014 against the casino's owner, Nevada Property 1 LLC, the Marquee nightclub, and Roof Deck Entertainment LLC. The case went to trial in Clark County District Court in 2017. Rahul Ravipudi of Panish Shea Ravipudi, with co-counsel Paul Padda, told jurors that Moradi was a VIP guest who was "assaulted, battered and falsely imprisoned," and pointed to a culture that put "profits over safety." The defense argued that Moradi had head-butted the manager first, but one juror later said video of the encounter showed no head-butt.
On April 26, 2017, the jury returned $160.5 million in compensatory damages, much of it tied to Moradi's lost past and future earnings. His team then asked the same jury for $483 million in punitive damages. A defense lawyer told the court that the compensatory figure alone would have "financially annihilated" the company.
While the jury was deliberating on punitive damages that Friday, the two sides reached a confidential settlement. The terms were never disclosed, and the agreement resolved the case in place of the $160.5 million verdict.
The case settled on undisclosed terms later that week, while the same jury was deliberating punitive damages, so the verdict never became a judgment.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Las Vegas Review-Journal: $160M nightclub verdict·Archived copy
- 2.Las Vegas Review-Journal: settlement wipes out $160M verdict·Archived copy
- 3.Patch: nine-figure verdict for hedge-fund manager·Archived copy
- 4.Pollstar: Las Vegas nightclub attack settled·Archived copy
- 5.Claims Journal: Nevada Supreme Court insurance ruling·Archived copy
- 6.GGB Magazine, Cosmo Settles in Nightclub Assault Case, 2017
More proven verdicts from Panish Shea Ravipudi LLP
All Panish Shea Ravipudi LLP proven verdicts →A Los Angeles jury ordered General Motors to pay $4.9 billion after a 1979 Chevrolet Malibu's rear-mounted fuel tank ruptured and burned six occupants in a rear-end crash, the largest US personal-injury verdict at the time.
Kevin Boyle of the firm served as one of three plaintiffs' co-lead counsel in the $800 million settlement with MGM Resorts for victims of the 2017 Route 91 Harvest festival mass shooting at Mandalay Bay.
An $800 million settlement from MGM Resorts International resolved claims by more than 4,400 plaintiffs over the October 1, 2017 Route 91 Harvest Festival mass shooting in Las Vegas, one of the largest victim-compensation settlements in U.S. history.
A Los Angeles County jury ordered Rebecca Grossman and former Major League pitcher Scott Erickson to pay $198.17 million for the deaths of two brothers, ages 11 and 8, struck in a marked crosswalk near their home.
Related premises liability verdicts
Anapol Weiss shareholder Kristen Gibbons Feden helped secure $1.6 billion in default verdicts for 104 women sexually abused as children by former Long Island pediatrician Stuart Copperman, one of the largest cumulative civil awards against a single individual in U.S. history.
A Dallas jury awarded $1.1 billion against a trust fund heir who beat a 2-year-old into a permanent vegetative state in 2021, a verdict the firm calls the largest child-assault award in U.S. history.
A Clayton County jury awarded $1 billion to a woman who was raped at age 14 by an armed security guard her employer hired without verifying he was licensed to carry a weapon.
Joseph Bruno and Bruno & Bruno served as lead plaintiffs' counsel in a landmark class action brought by more than 8,000 Gentilly residents exposed to a butadiene tank-car fire in 1987, securing a jury verdict that included $2.5 billion in punitive damages against CSX Transportation alone, later reduced to $850 million on appeal and affirmed by Louisiana's Fourth Circuit.