Swartz & Swartz

A federal jury in Boston awarded $18.4 million to Sean Stentiford, a former paramedic turned attorney, after two Lahey Clinic physicians canceled an HIV test he had consented to in 2007, allowing the virus to progress undetected to AIDS and cause permanent brain damage.

A federal jury awarded $10.2 million to the Trull family after finding Volkswagen negligent for equipping the rear bench of a 1986 Vanagon with lap-only belts, a design that contributed to one child's death and two severe brain injuries in a 1991 New Hampshire crash.

A Worcester Superior Court jury awarded Audrey Serrano $2.5 million in damages, plus roughly $1.2 million in pre-judgment interest, after finding that her physician negligently kept her on powerful HIV medications for nearly nine years despite no evidence she carried the virus.

Swartz and Swartz secured a $2.5 million settlement in 1987 for a Canadian family whose infant son suffered permanent brain damage after choking on a Fisher-Price Little People figurine in 1971.

Swartz and Swartz won a $1.8 million jury verdict -- affirmed in substantial part by the First Circuit -- after establishing that Sears and Pittway failed to warn buyers that an AC-powered smoke detector could be knocked out by the very electrical short that started a house fire.