Top Individual Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements of 2004

A New Orleans jury ordered the major tobacco companies to fund a statewide smoking-cessation program for more than 200,000 Louisiana smokers who became addicted before 1988, awarding $591 million in one of the largest class-action verdicts against the tobacco industry.

A New Orleans jury ordered four major tobacco companies to fund a $591 million statewide smoking cessation program for more than 200,000 Louisiana smokers, the first verdict of its kind in U.S. history.

Gillin, Jacobson, Ellis and Larsen recovered $111.7 million for 186 patients who underwent medically unjustified cardiac procedures at Tenet Healthcare's Redding Medical Center, the largest single-firm share of a $395 million mass settlement.

In June 2004 a San Diego jury ordered Ford Motor Co. to pay $368.6 million to Benetta Buell-Wilson, a San Diego mother of two left paralyzed when her 1997 Explorer rolled four and a half times and the roof crushed onto her neck. It was Ford's first trial loss in an Explorer rollover case after a long string of defense verdicts. The trial court cut the award to $150 million, the Court of Appeal reduced it to $82.6 million in 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court sent it back after Philip Morris v. Williams, the Court of Appeal reimposed the $82.6 million in 2008, and the Supreme Court declined review in late 2009, when the award stood at about $87 million with interest. Dennis Schoville of Schoville & Arnell was lead trial counsel. The firm is no longer in active practice, and this page documents the case as part of the public record.

A Philadelphia jury awarded $75.6 million to Joseph Tuski, a highway construction flagman left quadriplegic when a drunk driver who had just served himself alcohol at the bar he managed struck him at 40 mph and fled the scene.

A Los Angeles jury awarded $58,137,361 to a construction worker who suffered third-degree burns over 75 percent of his body when a defective O-ring on a Caterpillar scraper caused flammable hydraulic fluid to spray onto a hot engine, producing what was then the largest single-plaintiff personal-injury verdict in California history.

A Fulton County jury awarded $47.7 million after a defective rear seat latch in a 2000 Lincoln LS collapsed during a crash, severing a six-year-old girl's thoracic spinal cord and leaving her paralyzed.

A Maricopa County jury awarded $45.5 million to the family of a 26-year-old woman with severe developmental disabilities who drowned while unsupervised at a Phoenix group home operated by Developmental Systems Inc.

A Cook County jury awarded the Yoder family $38.3 million after a multi-truck pileup on Interstate 90 near Rockford killed their four-year-old daughter and left their two-year-old son permanently disabled, and the verdict survived appeal in 2008.

A Milwaukee jury verdict and a related settlement delivered $25.24 million to a family after an unlicensed first-year resident spent 11 hours treating their teenage daughter for constipation while a twisted bowel killed the tissue it fed.

On February 13, 2004, a Bronx jury awarded $86,735,134 to Frank Miraglia, a 45 year old construction laborer who fell into a trench when an unsecured plank collapsed under him and was impaled on a steel rebar that severed his spinal cord, leaving him a paraplegic. Steven L. Hess, then of Simonson, Hess & Leibowitz, P.C., was trial counsel; the firm continues today as Hess & Leibowitz, PLLC. The trial judge reduced the award to $25,030,134, and in January 2007 the Appellate Division, First Department trimmed it further, sustaining $5 million for past pain and suffering, conditioning the future pain and suffering award on a reduction from $10 million to $5 million (a reduction Miraglia accepted by stipulation), and cutting future medical expenses to $8,056,222, which left the judgment at just under $20 million.

In March 2004 a Jasper County, Missouri jury awarded $20 million to Eric Peoples and his wife, Cassandra, against the makers of the butter flavoring used at the microwave popcorn plant where he worked. Peoples developed permanent lung damage after years of breathing vapors from the flavoring, and doctors expected he would eventually need a double lung transplant. The jury awarded $18 million to him and $2 million to his wife. He was the first of about 30 workers from the plant to take a case to trial, and the companies' appeal was later settled on confidential terms.

Charles Kapar, a U.S. aid agency auditor, was beaten and tortured during the December 1984 hijacking of a Kuwait Airways jet to Tehran. In September 2004 the federal court in Washington entered a $13.5 million default judgment against Iran and its Ministry of Information and Security under the state-sponsored terrorism exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Iran never appeared. In 2015 the court authorized attachment of Iranian property to collect the unpaid balance.

A Jackson County jury held Ford Motor Company liable for a defective fuel tank design after three members of a Missouri family burned to death when their F-150 pickup ruptured and ignited during a 1999 highway collision.

A Cook County jury awarded Jean Frigo $7,775,668.02 after finding that Silver Cross Hospital and Medical Center negligently credentialed a podiatrist who cut through her infected diabetic ulcer during bunion surgery, an error that led to a bone infection and the amputation of her foot. The podiatrist, Paul Kirchner, had never met the hospital's own criteria for surgical privileges and settled with Frigo separately for $900,000 before trial. The trial court credited that settlement against the verdict, entering judgment against Silver Cross for $6,875,668.02. The Appellate Court of Illinois affirmed in full in 2007, in a decision credited with establishing negligent credentialing as an independent cause of action under Illinois law.

A Napa County jury found Polaris Industries liable for the design of a two-seat personal watercraft after a first-time rider fell backward off it at Lake Berryessa and the jet nozzle's high-pressure stream caused catastrophic internal injuries. The jury awarded Susan Ford economic and noneconomic damages and her husband a loss of consortium award, and found her not comparatively negligent. The court of appeal affirmed the judgment in 2006.

The Montana Supreme Court reversed a 50% contributory-negligence deduction and restored the full $969,797 jury verdict for the widow of welding supervisor Andre Woods, who was killed when a hy-rail vehicle traveled more than four miles past its authorized track warrant limits and collided with an oncoming train.

A Montgomery County, Maryland jury found that an otolaryngologist caused brain injury to Billy Karl Boone during a January 2000 revisionary mastoidectomy and failed to obtain informed consent. It awarded $943,000 for lost earning capacity, medical expenses and non-economic damages. The Court of Appeals of Maryland upheld the judgment in December 2006. Patrick A. Malone tried the case while at Stein, Mitchell & Mezines.

Jose Raimundo Madeira, a roofer employed by C & L Construction, fell from the top of a building at a development site in Monroe, New York, on June 20, 2001. A federal jury in the Southern District of New York found the site owner and the general contractor liable under Labor Law 240(1) and awarded $638,671.63 in compensatory damages. The Second Circuit affirmed the judgment in all respects in November 2006.

Richard Alexander represented roughly 250 current and former IBM San Jose disk-drive plant workers and their families who alleged cancers and birth defects from chemical exposures, ultimately reaching a confidential settlement with IBM in June 2004 after a bellwether jury trial found for IBM.

Frederick R. Hovde secured a 2004 Indiana Supreme Court ruling holding that companies licensing their trademarks for use on consumer products may be held liable in negligence when those products cause injury.

The estate and daughter of Patricia Martin, a 36-year-old Domino Sugar employee who died after superheated slurry burned nearly half her body during a routine maintenance task, settled confidentially against the equipment contractor Maryland Mechanical Systems Inc. at the close of the plaintiff's case in July 2004.