Top Individual Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements of 2003

Monsanto and its chemical spinoff Solutia agreed in August 2003 to pay $700 million to resolve claims from more than 21,000 Anniston, Alabama residents who were exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls the company manufactured and dumped near their homes for nearly four decades.

Jamie Lebovitz served on the federal MDL Plaintiff's Steering Committee for the Alaska Airlines Flight 261 disaster, representing 18 families in confidential individual settlements as part of a broader litigation that recovered more than $300 million for surviving relatives of the 88 people killed.

A Miami-Dade jury awarded $104.4 million against pool pump manufacturer Sta-Rite Industries for a 14-year-old boy left with catastrophic brain damage after pool drain suction held him underwater for about twelve minutes, a verdict won by Michael Haggard, Andrew Haggard, and Robert Parks in 2003 but reversed on appeal the following year, and the case never produced a second public verdict.

In an opinion dated May 7, 2003, Judge Harold Baer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a default judgment of approximately $104 million against the Republic of Iraq, al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in consolidated wrongful death suits brought for two men killed in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. James E. Beasley of The Beasley Firm represented the estates of George Eric Smith, who worked in the South Tower, and Timothy Soulas, who worked in the North Tower; the Second Circuit's opinion in the collection appeal names him as counsel of record. None of the defendants appeared, so the court held a two day inquest on damages, found on expert testimony that Iraq had provided material support to al Qaeda, and held Iraq responsible for approximately $63.5 million of the total. The opinion itemizes the award by estate, by component and by defendant, and no source states a single total for either estate. Two collection efforts have failed, the last of them in the Second Circuit in August 2025, and no source found shows the judgment was ever paid.

Colson Hicks Eidson served as co-counsel to a class of Jewish families and helped reach a roughly $100 million settlement with Service Corporation International after workers at two South Florida Menorah Gardens cemeteries buried people in the wrong graves and discarded scattered remains.

When a shunt revision at New York Hospital failed and went unaddressed in 1990, Samuel Desiderio suffered catastrophic brain damage; a jury awarded roughly $50 million and New York's highest court upheld the structured judgment in full.

A Haitian-American urological surgeon was subjected to a felony-level takedown on the Santa Monica Freeway after LAPD ran the plates on his rental car and received a stolen-vehicle alert caused by Budget Rent-A-Car's own plate error.

A Suffolk County jury awarded $28 million, including $25 million in punitive damages, after Father's Huddle Cafe in Boston served alcohol to underage patrons who attacked Thomas Christopher, 23, chasing him into traffic where he was struck and killed; the Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed the verdict against the bar on January 28, 2003.

A Baltimore City jury returned a $105 million wrongful-death verdict against off-duty Officer Rodney Price, who shot Tristin Little Sr. more than a dozen times with his service weapon in March 2001; the trial court later reduced the award to approximately $26.99 million.

A Fredericksburg jury awarded $6.5 million to a young attorney left with permanent spinal cord damage after his primary care physician repeatedly dismissed neurological symptoms without examination, producing what was then reported as the largest medical malpractice verdict in Virginia history. The award was reduced to $1.55 million under the state damages cap, and the judgment was later reversed on an evidentiary ruling, sending the case back for a retrial on causation and damages.

A 30-year-old passenger was left tetraplegic after a speeding driver hit his stalled car on a South Carolina road, and Michael A. DeMayo stacked two liability policies and an umbrella policy to reach a $1.6 million settlement.

A Franklin County jury in June 2003 found a Rush Transportation driver liable for the death of motorcyclist Robert L. Beavers Jr., who was run over on Groveport Road in Columbus in October 2001 while the driver fled. The jury awarded $767,600 in compensatory damages plus punitive damages against the driver and the company. The Tenth District later threw out the punitive award against Rush but left the compensatory award, the driver's punitive award and the attorney fees in place.

A family alleged that negligent management of prenatal care during a 1993 pregnancy caused their son's brain injury. The jury awarded $5,625,000 against an obstetrician and her practice. The statutory cap reduced it to $1,250,000, and the Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed against a five-ground constitutional challenge.

Alfred Heekin, 84, suffered severe brain injuries on January 7, 2000, when he swerved to avoid a wrong-lane escort vehicle and struck an oversized manufactured home a Bennett Truck Transport rig was hauling across both lanes of Route 9 in Bennington, Vermont. He died nineteen months later. His widow, Marion Heekin, sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont, and the Bennington firm now known as BarrSternberg took the case to a jury trial before Judge J. Garvan Murtha. On the third day of trial, with Marion Heekin about to testify, Bennett agreed to pay $1,200,000 to settle the wrongful death claim. Vermont imposes no cap on wrongful death damages, and because the case settled before verdict, the full amount stood with no appeal.

Louis Hollingsworth secured a $400,000 jury verdict for a Tucson woman who slipped and fell entering a Safeway store, netting $360,000 after a 10% comparative-fault finding against her.

A Los Angeles jury found Candid Camera and host Peter Funt liable for negligence, false imprisonment, and intentional misrepresentation after a prank at a small Arizona airport left Philip Zelnick with leg injuries, awarding $300,000 in punitive damages.

A Lubbock County jury found Bender Terrace nursing home 51 percent responsible for pressure sores that worsened while a quadriplegic resident was in its care in 2000. It awarded $350,000 for pain and suffering and $180,000 in medical expenses, and the judgment was $270,300 after fault was apportioned. The Amarillo court of appeals upheld the pain and suffering award but reversed for unsegregated medical expenses and a missing settlement credit, and remanded for a new trial.