Largest Personal Injury Verdicts Never Collected of 1999

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.

In July 1999, a Philadelphia jury awarded $907 million against Ira Einhorn for the 1977 killing of his girlfriend, Helen 'Holly' Maddux, in a civil wrongful death and survival action filed by her family. Einhorn was a fugitive living in France at the time and sent no attorney, so the court directed a verdict for the family on liability and left the six-member jury to decide damages alone. The jury deliberated a little over an hour before returning $752 million in punitive damages and $155 million in compensatory damages. Firm founder James E. Beasley represented the Maddux family. The suit was never intended to collect money from a fugitive with no assets; it was filed to stop Einhorn from profiting off book or movie deals about the case.

A Kaufman County jury awarded $296 million in compensatory damages against Koch Industries after a corroded, unmaintained butane pipeline exploded and killed two teenagers on August 24, 1996.

Power Rogers LLP recovered $100 million for Rev. Scott and Janet Willis after six of their nine children were killed when a mudflap assembly fell from a tractor-trailer on I-94 and ignited their minivan, a case that ultimately exposed an Illinois license-bribery scheme and sent Governor George Ryan to federal prison.

Stuart Grossman and Andrew Yaffa secured a $37.37 million wrongful-death verdict against Florida Power and Light after a utility crew deactivated a traffic signal without notifying police, causing a fatal multi-vehicle collision that killed a 12-year-old girl.

In 1999, a federal jury in Boise found that Dr. Ian Ross Donald had punctured a fetal blood vessel during an amniocentesis on Sandy Kirkland, causing internal bleeding that went undetected for about sixteen hours and left her son with severe brain damage and spastic quadriplegia. The jury awarded $29,715,077, finding Donald 75 percent at fault and reckless and Wood River Medical Center 25 percent at fault and merely negligent, while clearing Sandy's other treating physician entirely. Because Idaho's noneconomic damages cap does not apply to a defendant a jury finds reckless, only the hospital's share of noneconomic damages was reduced, leaving roughly $26,538,077 of the award standing. The Idaho Supreme Court later upheld the cap's constitutionality on a certified question from the case. Paul Luvera, of the firm now known as Luvera Law Firm, represented the Kirkland family at trial.

An Oakland County jury found Warner Bros. and The Jenny Jones Show liable for the wrongful death of Scott Amedure and assessed $25 million, an award the Michigan Court of Appeals later reversed.

A Stanislaus County jury awarded $6,226,793 in compensatory damages and $290 million in punitive damages against Ford Motor Company after a 1978 Bronco rolled over and its roof collapsed, killing three members of the Romo family and orphaning three children. Joseph W. Carcione Jr., the retired founder of the practice that continues today as Carcione, Henderson & Markowitz, tried the case. The punitive award was cut to $23,723,287 in 2003 after the U.S. Supreme Court's State Farm v. Campbell decision, and Ford paid the reduced judgment.

A Charles City County jury returned a $20 million verdict for a ten-year-old boy who suffered third-degree burns across 25 percent of his body after contacting 13,200 volts inside an inadequately secured Virginia Power substation next to his Richmond apartment complex, and the Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed the award in full.

A Phoenix jury ordered General Motors to pay $17 million for the wrongful death of a Scottsdale woman crushed by her own pickup, a verdict the Arizona Court of Appeals later set aside over a flawed jury instruction.

A Philadelphia jury awarded more than $51 million against SEPTA in December 1999, after a four-year-old boy's foot was severed in a subway escalator and the transit agency was caught mid-trial concealing maintenance records. Because Pennsylvania's sovereign immunity cap limited the tort damages and SEPTA moved to appeal, the family settled for $7.4 million in January 2000.

The parents of an eight-year-old boy killed in a November 1995 crash in West Fargo, North Dakota, sued the driver, his father and a second driver alleged to have been racing him. The driver admitted liability, and the jury awarded the parents $810,457.96 against him and found the second driver not negligent. The trial court refused to subtract the family's pretrial settlement with the father from the award, and the North Dakota Supreme Court affirmed in 1999.

A registered nurse whose pickup was rear-ended by a Rush Trucking tractor-trailer in 1994 won a federal jury award, entered as a $931,218 judgment in January 1999 in the Western District of New York. The Second Circuit held that the separate emotional distress awards duplicated pain and suffering and allowed $581,218 to stand on remittitur. Rush Trucking had admitted its driver caused the crash and contested only the cause and extent of her injuries.

Jimmy Apodaca, a 17-year employee at Excel Corporation's beef-packing plant in Friona, Texas, sued the non-subscribing employer over cumulative trauma injuries to his hand, neck and back. A Lubbock County jury found Excel negligent in August 1999 and awarded $536,472, and the Amarillo Court of Appeals affirmed. The Texas Supreme Court reversed in 2002 for lack of causation evidence and rendered a take-nothing judgment.