$28.6 Million Verdict Against a Husband for a Brutal Assault on His Former Wife
After trial: The Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed the verdict, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in October 2016, making the judgment final. No independent source confirms how much of the award has actually been collected from the individual defendant.
Won by Silver Golub & Teitell LLP.
A jury in the Stamford-Norwalk Judicial District awarded Mary Margaret Farren $28.6 million after finding that her former husband, David Farren, attacked her with a hammer and a knife during their divorce proceedings, leaving her with severe and permanent injuries.
What happened
Mary Margaret and David Farren were in the middle of a divorce when he attacked her at their home. According to the case presented at trial, David Farren beat her with a hammer and cut her with a knife, an assault severe enough that she was not expected to survive it. She did survive, but with catastrophic and permanent physical injuries.
Rather than proceeding only through the criminal system, Mary Margaret Farren brought a civil suit against her former husband. Ernest Teitell of Silver Golub & Teitell represented her. Civil suits arising from a criminal assault are less common than the criminal prosecution itself, but they exist for a reason distinct from punishment: a criminal case can send an assailant to prison, but only a civil judgment can compensate the victim for medical costs, lost income, and the pain of what was done to her, and only a civil case gives the victim standing to control that part of the outcome herself.
The jury heard the facts of the attack and returned a verdict of $28.6 million, an amount that reflected both the severity of the injuries and, in a case like this, an implicit judgment about the deliberateness of the harm. David Farren appealed the verdict through the Connecticut court system. The Connecticut Supreme Court upheld it, and when Farren sought further review, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in October 2016, more than three years after the jury's verdict, exhausting his avenues of appeal and leaving the $28.6 million judgment fully final.
A final judgment is not the same as a collected one. Unlike a case against a corporation or an insured medical practice, a judgment against an individual defendant depends on what that person actually has or can pay over time. No independent reporting reviewed for this account confirms how much of the $28.6 million Mary Margaret Farren has actually recovered from her former husband, and collectability against an individual of this magnitude is often the harder half of a case like this, separate from and after the legal victory itself. What is confirmed is the verdict, the appellate history, and its finality: the courts settled David Farren's liability for $28.6 million, whatever the practical path to collecting it has looked like since.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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