Largest Group Settlements and Injury Recovery Funds of 2007

As chair of the plaintiffs' negotiating committee and Liaison Counsel in the Vioxx multidistrict litigation, Russ Herman directed the negotiations that produced a $4.85 billion settlement with Merck resolving approximately 45,000 to 50,000 personal-injury claims.

The Cartwright Law Firm was among the first California filers against Merck over the painkiller Vioxx, and Robert Cartwright Jr. served on the California JCCP Plaintiffs' Steering Committee through the 2007 global resolution that distributed $4.85 billion across more than 45,000 claimants.

Hugh Lambert served on the court-appointed Plaintiffs Steering Committee that secured a $330 million class action settlement for roughly 6,000 St. Bernard Parish homeowners whose properties were contaminated when Hurricane Katrina dislodged a crude oil storage tank at Murphy Oil's Meraux, Louisiana refinery.

Four construction workers were killed and more than 30 injured when five floors of a parking garage under construction at the Tropicana Casino Resort in Atlantic City collapsed in October 2003, leading to what attorneys described as the largest construction-accident settlement in U.S. history at that time.

William Kershaw served as co-lead class counsel in a wage-and-hour class action on behalf of roughly 23,600 California UPS drivers, securing an $87 million settlement for systematic denial of meal and rest breaks, the largest California wage-and-hour class action settlement at the time.

The Popham Law Firm secured a $57 million settlement on behalf of more than 1,700 Sprint employees who alleged the company's automated performance system unlawfully targeted workers over 40 during a series of mass layoffs, at the time the largest ADEA class settlement in the District of Kansas.

A Clark County jury awarded $41.5 million to a young man who sustained third-degree burns over 90 percent of his body after the motocross clothing he wore failed to protect him from a fuel fire, finding LeMans Corporation liable for selling gear that was not fire-retardant.

A Honolulu jury found that Key Principal Partners LLC used a Houston investor's partnership access to study Honsador Lumber's financials, then quietly acquired the company for itself and cut him out of the $50 million deal entirely.

A federal jury in Fresno awarded $27.5 million to Brian Hall after a fireball erupted from a biomass boiler at the AES Mendota power plant, leaving him with catastrophic burns.

A San Diego Superior Court jury awarded $26.5 million to Anderprises Inc. after Caltrans used eminent domain to take a 2.8-acre strip for the Route 905 freeway, cutting off access to the remaining 55 acres of the Anderson family's Otay Mesa land.

A Miami-Dade jury awarded $102.7 million against shopping center owner Report Investment Corporation for the shooting that left Sami Barrak a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic in the parking lot outside Tootsie's Cabaret, a negligent security verdict tried by Michael Haggard that settled about a week later for the $26 million in total available insurance limits.

On November 10, 2000, a 22-year-old New Jersey woman driving a used 1997 Ford Explorer on the Garden State Parkway found the throttle stuck as she closed on slower traffic. When she pressed the accelerator hard enough to free it, the SUV surged forward, she lost control, and it rolled over. She suffered what her surgeon called a near complete amputation of her right arm at the wrist and a total brachial plexus injury, and by the time of trial an occupational therapist described the arm as completely paralyzed apart from some elbow flexion. On April 12, 2007, a Middlesex County jury found Ford Motor Company and dealer Freehold Ford liable for a defective throttle and a failure to warn, awarded $10,626,479.89 in compensatory damages, then cut that award by $2 million because she had not worn her seatbelt, leaving $8,626,479.89, of which her 28 percent share of the fault left her about $6.2 million under New Jersey's comparative negligence statute; a second phase added $42,050 in punitive damages. The Appellate Division affirmed in full and the New Jersey Supreme Court denied certification.

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.

Jessie Lee Williams Jr., 40, a father of seven, was booked into the Harrison County Adult Detention Center in Gulfport on misdemeanor charges on February 4, 2006. In the booking room Sgt. Ryan Teel and other guards punched and kicked him while he was restrained, Tasered him, pepper-sprayed him through a spit mask, wrapped a soaked sheet over his face and beat him in a restraint chair. He was brain dead by February 6. Teel was sentenced to life. Harrison County settled the family's civil rights suit in July 2007 for $3,500,000.

A Franklin County jury found World Harvest Church and a daycare worker liable for beating Michael and Lacey Faieta's 2-year-old son, returning a verdict of nearly $6 million that was later capped and settled for $3.1 million.

A Platte County, Missouri jury found that understaffing at Barry Manor and White Oak Manor in Kansas City left a 73-year-old stroke survivor with untreated heel pressure ulcers that led to amputation of both legs. It awarded his estate $500,000 in compensatory damages and $2,522,500 in punitive damages against the owner and his management company. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed in 2009.

On March 8, 2003, Chicago police officer Alvin Weems shot 23-year-old Michael Pleasance in the head at the 95th Street Red Line station while trying to break up a fight in which Pleasance was only a bystander. CTA surveillance video contradicted the officer's claim that Pleasance lunged for his gun, and the City admitted liability, so the May 2007 trial was on damages alone. A Cook County jury awarded his mother $12.5 million for loss of society. The Illinois Appellate Court reversed in December 2009 over prejudicial closing arguments and a jury instruction, and the City settled for $3 million in March 2011.

An 18-year-old died in May 2005 when his snow machine went into a hole in the ice near Barrow that North Slope Borough Public Works had dug. His mother, Isabel Brower, sued the Borough, and an August 2007 jury found it negligent and a legal cause of his death. The jury awarded $1,756,365. Alaska's cap on noneconomic damages cut the award to $1,280,675, and the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed in 2009.

The Washington Supreme Court abolished a century-old contractor immunity rule to revive the wrongful-death claim of a foreman killed when cement blocks collapsed into an excavation pit, producing an $887,000 settlement after remand.

Patrick Regan represented the adult children of slain New York Times journalist David Rosenbaum in a $20 million lawsuit against Washington, DC for catastrophic emergency response failures, achieving a 2007 settlement that compelled a complete overhaul of the city's EMS system and a separate confidential settlement with Howard University Hospital.