Largest Group Settlements and Injury Recovery Funds of 2000

A Dallas County jury returned one of the largest medical-malpractice verdicts in the country after a teenager with cerebral palsy died at Medical City Dallas when hospital staff administered multiple times the appropriate dose of the anesthetic propofol following a routine airway procedure.

A St. Louis jury awarded $105 million to tire technician Randy Dorman after a Bridgestone/Firestone RH5 multi-piece truck wheel explosively separated during inflation, fracturing his face, both arms, and wrist, while internal company documents showed Firestone engineers had tracked nearly 100 similar incidents for decades.

Robert Habush won a $99.25 million Milwaukee County jury verdict for the widows of three ironworkers killed when the Big Blue crane collapsed at Miller Park. The appeals court vacated the $94 million punitive award, the Wisconsin Supreme Court reinstated the claim in 2005, and the widows settled in January 2006 for about $30 million.

A 54-year-old woman underwent a routine bronchoscopy for a possible tuberculosis biopsy, but physicians ignored oximeter alarms and delayed intubation until she had suffered irreversible anoxic brain damage, leaving her with locked-in syndrome; the Cook County jury returned a $55.4 million verdict against the responsible physicians, then the largest medical malpractice award in Illinois history.

A Madison County jury awarded James Hutcheson $34.1 million after he developed mesothelioma from asbestos exposure during contract work at Shell Oil's Wood River, Illinois refinery in the 1950s and 1960s.

David Paris and Kathleen St. John won Ohio Supreme Court certification of a 1.4-million-member class and secured a $31 million court-approved settlement after proving State Farm concealed a 1994 high-court ruling that would have entitled policyholders to enhanced uninsured-motorist coverage.

Ross Cellino and Stephen Barnes won a $47.4 million Erie County jury verdict for a 22-year-old law student who suffered a catastrophic brain injury when two drivers played high-speed road tag on the New York State Thruway.

On November 6, 1995, a Mack tractor-trailer hauling logs ran off a Clarke County, Alabama road and rolled over, jamming the passenger door and shifting the logs forward to block the driver's door. The rollover trapped driver Tonnie Ray Witherspoon inside the cab, where a small fire from the crash spread and engulfed the truck, killing him. His mother, Mary Witherspoon, sued Mack Trucks under Alabama's Extended Manufacturer's Liability Doctrine, and a Clarke County jury awarded $50 million in punitive damages, later remitted to $25 million. The Alabama Supreme Court affirmed Mack's liability in 2003 but ordered a further remittitur to $6 million, which Witherspoon accepted.

A mother and her two toddler daughters, each diagnosed with PTSD after surviving the American Airlines Flight 1420 runway crash in Little Rock, won a $3.35 million jury verdict that the Eighth Circuit affirmed in full.

A District of Columbia jury awarded $2 million to a hardware store customer who suffered a subdural hematoma and emergency brain surgery after a Hechinger employee assaulted him, and the D.C. Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict in full.

A Philadelphia jury awarded Henry Moore $75,000 in August 2000 for a herniated lumbar disc suffered when a driver turned left in front of his car on August 21, 1997 and then rolled back into it. The driver admitted negligence, and the fight was over whether a limited tort election bound Mr. Moore. The trial judge held it did not, denied post-trial relief and entered judgment on the verdict.