Top Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements of 2009
The 20 largest personal injury recoveries from 2009, nationwide, ranked by amount, with 41 independently-sourced results to browse. Individual client results and group recoveries are both listed and labeled. Each links to the full story, the firm, and the record behind the number.
Every result on this list holds a ProvenVerdicts designation, the largest verified personal injury result of 2009 or one of the Top 20, which the firm can display with a badge from its results page. The ranking is live and moves as results are verified.
What the 2009 list shows
4 of the 16 jury verdicts in the Top 20 of 2009 are on appeal, were reduced after trial, or cannot be collected.
- Together they account for $531.06 million of the $796.79 million the 16 verdicts add up to (67 percent).
- Of those, 2 were reduced after trial and 2 were won against a defendant who is uninsured, bankrupt, closed or in prison. See the uncollectable results
- None of the 16 verdicts are confirmed paid in full. Most never say: settlements after a verdict are usually confidential, and courts rarely record whether a judgment was satisfied.
As of November 7, 2026. Every verdict still ranks at the amount that legally stood, with its label. How outcomes are labeled
- $330 millionVerdictNot collectable
Hernando County Jury Awards $330 Million in DUI Wrongful Death of 13-Year-Old
A Hernando County jury returned a $330 million verdict for Angela Stone after a drunk driver ran a stop sign and fatally struck a minivan carrying her 13-year-old daughter.
After trial: The verdict is against an individual drunk driver and is largely uncollectable.
- $157 millionVerdictNot collectable
$157 Million Jury Verdict for Widow of Man Killed by Defective Ol' Man Tree Stand
A Tippecanoe County jury awarded $157 million to the widow of Timothy Simonton, a 42-year-old Indiana man who died in October 2005 after the locking pins on an Ol' Man tree stand failed and left him hanging from a tree during a deer-scouting outing.
After trial: None of the three defendant companies, including tree stand maker TSR Inc. and its predecessor L&L Enterprises, appeared to contest the case at trial, and L&L's own registered agent said he had not been involved with the company for about a year. The defendants appear to have been out of business by the time of the 2009 verdict, making the judgment largely uncollectable.
- $45 million
$45 Million Judgment for San Mateo Woman Left Quadriplegic When Hauling Truck Ran a Red Light
In March 2009 a San Mateo County Superior Court judge awarded $45 million to Tricia Roth, a 41-year-old former software developer from San Mateo who was left quadriplegic when a company truck ran a red light and struck her car. She had sued the driver and the South San Francisco hauling company he worked for. The award rested largely on her lost future earnings and on the pain and suffering of a spinal cord injury. Her attorney, Mary E. Alexander, said she planned to pursue the two insurers that had refused to defend the driver.
After trial: No appeal of the judgment was found. The two insurers that declined to defend the driver sued Roth in federal court in 2011 over coverage, and the parties stipulated to dismiss that case with prejudice in 2013.
Mary Alexander & Associates2009 · San Mateo County Superior Court, Redwood CityRead the full story → - $40 millionVerdict
$40 Million Verdict Against Ford After 'False Park' Defect Left Georgia Woman Paraplegic
A DeKalb County jury awarded $40 million to Jessica Mundy and her husband after her 2004 Ford Explorer spontaneously shifted from park into reverse, striking and running over her, after the trial team showed Ford had known about the 'false park' transmission defect for decades.
- $34 millionVerdict
Jury Awards $34 Million After Prempro Hormone Therapy Causes Breast Cancer and Double Mastectomy
A Philadelphia jury awarded Donna Kendall $6.3 million in compensatory damages and $28 million in punitive damages after finding that Wyeth's Prempro hormone-replacement drug caused her breast cancer and the double mastectomy that followed; the Pennsylvania Superior Court restored the full punitive award in 2012 after the trial judge had cut it to $1 million.
- $30.95 millionVerdict
$30.95 Million Ohio Birth Injury Verdict Against Miami Valley Hospital After Uterine Rupture During Labor
A Montgomery County jury awarded the Stanziano family $30,953,181 in July 2009 after finding Miami Valley Hospital negligent in a birth injury case, reportedly the largest medical malpractice verdict in Ohio at the time. The parties then reached a confidential settlement before the punitive damages phase, so the amount actually paid was less than the verdict.
After trial: The parties settled confidentially before the punitive damages phase, so the family received less than the verdict amount. The settlement figure was never disclosed.
- $29.6 millionVerdict
Cook County Jury Awards $29.6 Million to Passenger Injured in 2005 Metra Derailment
A Cook County jury awarded commuter Renea Poppel $29.6 million after a Metra Rock Island train took a 10 mph crossover at 69 mph and derailed, the largest Illinois verdict for one person injured in a mass-transit crash.
- $26.06 millionVerdictReduced from $38.3 million
Spinal Injection of a Contraindicated Dye: $38.3 Million Verdict
Colson Hicks Eidson won a $38.3 million Miami-Dade verdict for Amanda Slavin after a neurosurgeon injected methylene blue, a dye contraindicated for spinal use, into her spine and left her with disabling nerve damage; the judgment against pharmacy contractor McKesson was later reversed on appeal.
After trial: Reduced on appeal: in 2011 the Third District reversed the judgment against McKesson, which the jury had held 14 percent at fault, for lack of a legal duty. The neurosurgeon's reported 68 percent share, about $26.06 million, remained; the hospital had settled before trial.
- $24 millionSettlementGroup recovery
Utah Wins $24 Million from Eli Lilly Over Off-Label Zyprexa Marketing to Medicaid Patients
Siegfried and Jensen attorneys, led by Joseph Steele, were appointed Special Assistant Attorneys General in the Utah Attorney General's action against Eli Lilly, securing a $24 million settlement over the company's decade-long campaign to push its antipsychotic Zyprexa to Medicaid patients for conditions the FDA had never approved.
- $22.5 millionVerdict
$22.5 Million After His Infant Daughter's Live Polio Vaccine Left a Staten Island Man Paralyzed
Dominick Tenuto of Staten Island, New York, contracted paralytic polio in 1979 after his five-month-old daughter was given Lederle Laboratories' live oral polio vaccine, Orimune, and the shed virus reached him through a fresh surgical wound while he cared for her. The polio left him a permanent paraplegic. He sued Lederle for failing to warn physicians that a vaccinated child could shed live virus and infect an unvaccinated adult in close contact, a case that took 28 years to reach trial and produced a 1997 New York Court of Appeals ruling on a pediatrician's duty to warn parents. In March 2009 a Richmond County jury found Lederle liable and awarded $22.5 million. The trial court denied Lederle's motion to set aside or reduce the verdict and entered judgment for the full amount on February 17, 2010. No later appellate decision in the case has been published.
After trial: Final judgment. The trial court denied Lederle's motion to set aside the verdict and directed entry of judgment for the full $22,500,000 plus interest and costs (order of October 28, 2009, decision of February 17, 2010).
Morelli Law Firm PLLC2009 · Supreme Court, Richmond County (Staten Island), New York (Index No. 1134/81)Read the full story → - $21 millionVerdict
$21 Million Verdict for Roofer Left Quadriplegic After 20-Foot Fall With No Safety Training
A Harris County jury awarded about $21 million to Santiago Arias, a construction worker paralyzed from the chest down after falling roughly 20 feet at a Houston job site where his employer had provided no fall-protection equipment or safety training.
- $18.3 millionVerdict
$18.3 Million Verdict for Quadriplegic Musician After Ford Van Seat Failure in Rollover
A federal jury awarded roughly $18.3 million to musician Dax Pierson after a defective seat restraint in a 2005 Ford passenger van separated during a rollover, driving his head into the roof and leaving him paralyzed from the chest down.
Thorsnes Bartolotta McGuire2009 · U.S. District Court, Northern District of CaliforniaRead the full story → - ~$18 millionVerdictReduced from $27.5 million
$27.5 Million Verdict for Pedestrian Who Lost a Leg to Manhattan Bus
After a New York City Transit Authority bus struck and dragged Gloria Aguilar in Manhattan, costing her a leg, Gair Gair Conason won her a $27.5 million verdict, later cut to roughly $18 million on appeal.
After trial: Cut to roughly $18 million on appeal.
Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf2009 · New York County (Manhattan), NYRead the full story → - $17.5 millionVerdict
$17.5 Million Verdict for Man Who Lost All Four Limbs After Infectious Disease Doctor Ignored MRSA
A Dallas County jury awarded $17.5 million to David Fitzgerald, a former maintenance worker who lost both arms and both legs after his infectious disease physician administered eight ineffective antibiotics while never prescribing the one drug that would have stopped his MRSA infection.
- $17.3 millionSettlement
Bomkamp v. Go Ends in $17.3 Million Settlement After a Splenectomy Left a Child With Permanent Brain Damage
A six-year-old girl suffered cardiac arrest and permanent brain damage when a surgeon used a morcellator he had never operated during a routine spleen removal, and the case settled for $17.3 million, the largest sum reported to the Wisconsin Law Journal in 2009.
- $16.6 millionVerdict
$16.6 Million Verdict for Family of Woman Who Died in Radio Station Water-Drinking Contest
A Sacramento jury awarded $16,577,118 to the family of Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old mother of three who died of water intoxication after competing in KDND radio's 'Hold Your Wee for a Wii' contest, at the time the largest wrongful-death verdict in Sacramento County.
- $14.6 millionSettlement
$14.6 Million Settlement Against Tahoma School District for Catastrophic Youth Football Brain Injury
Richard Adler and co-counsel Mike Nelson secured a $14.6 million settlement for Zackery Lystedt, a 13-year-old Tahoma Junior High football player left with catastrophic brain damage after coaches returned him to play following a concussion in October 2006.
- $13.28 millionVerdict
$13.28 Million Verdict for 19-Year-Old Left with Permanent Brain Injury in Farmersville Head-On Crash
A Tulare County jury awarded $13,284,363 to a nineteen-year-old Farmersville woman who suffered permanent traumatic brain injury and hemiparesis when a multi-vehicle chain-reaction crash sent an oncoming car into her lane.
Harris Personal Injury Lawyers, Inc.2009 · Tulare County Superior Court (Visalia, CA)Read the full story → - $11 millionVerdict
$11 Million Verdict for Widow After Brain-Injured Man Dies Neglected at Phoenix Assisted Living Facility
A Maricopa County jury awarded $11 million to the widow of a brain-injured man who died after ingesting plastic bags, condiment packets, and other foreign objects while left unsupervised at a Phoenix assisted living facility.
- $11 millionVerdict
Family Awarded $11 Million After Wisdom Tooth Extraction Kills Son With Known Immune Condition
A Middlesex County jury found that a Perth Amboy oral surgeon committed malpractice by extracting a 21-year-old man's wisdom teeth without first obtaining medical clearance, despite knowing the patient had a hereditary condition that made routine dental trauma dangerous. Twelve hours after the August 2005 surgery, the patient's throat swelled shut and he suffocated. The jury cleared the referring family dentist and awarded the man's family more than $11 million against the oral surgeon. David Mazie of Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman represented the family at trial.
After trial: Two dental trade outlets reported the verdict as $10.2 million; with interest and the other settlements in the case, the family's recovery exceeded $12 million.
Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman, LLC2009 · Superior Court of New Jersey, Middlesex County (New Brunswick)Read the full story →
Largest verified result of 2009 in each state
22 states have a verified personal injury result from 2009 so far. Each row is the largest individual result in that state, and links to its full story.
All 2009 verdicts and settlements
41 results, largest first
A Hernando County jury returned a $330 million verdict for Angela Stone after a drunk driver ran a stop sign and fatally struck a minivan carrying her 13-year-old daughter.
A Tippecanoe County jury awarded $157 million to the widow of Timothy Simonton, a 42-year-old Indiana man who died in October 2005 after the locking pins on an Ol' Man tree stand failed and left him hanging from a tree during a deer-scouting outing.
A Galveston federal jury awarded $100 million to ten contract workers exposed to carbon disulfide at BP's Texas City refinery in April 2007. The judge set aside the punitive damages, seven workers later settled on undisclosed terms, and the Fifth Circuit vacated the verdict for the remaining three in 2011.
In March 2009 a San Mateo County Superior Court judge awarded $45 million to Tricia Roth, a 41-year-old former software developer from San Mateo who was left quadriplegic when a company truck ran a red light and struck her car. She had sued the driver and the South San Francisco hauling company he worked for. The award rested largely on her lost future earnings and on the pain and suffering of a spinal cord injury. Her attorney, Mary E. Alexander, said she planned to pursue the two insurers that had refused to defend the driver.
A DeKalb County jury awarded $40 million to Jessica Mundy and her husband after her 2004 Ford Explorer spontaneously shifted from park into reverse, striking and running over her, after the trial team showed Ford had known about the 'false park' transmission defect for decades.
A Philadelphia jury awarded Donna Kendall $6.3 million in compensatory damages and $28 million in punitive damages after finding that Wyeth's Prempro hormone-replacement drug caused her breast cancer and the double mastectomy that followed; the Pennsylvania Superior Court restored the full punitive award in 2012 after the trial judge had cut it to $1 million.
A Montgomery County jury awarded the Stanziano family $30,953,181 in July 2009 after finding Miami Valley Hospital negligent in a birth injury case, reportedly the largest medical malpractice verdict in Ohio at the time. The parties then reached a confidential settlement before the punitive damages phase, so the amount actually paid was less than the verdict.
A Cook County jury awarded commuter Renea Poppel $29.6 million after a Metra Rock Island train took a 10 mph crossover at 69 mph and derailed, the largest Illinois verdict for one person injured in a mass-transit crash.
Colson Hicks Eidson won a $38.3 million Miami-Dade verdict for Amanda Slavin after a neurosurgeon injected methylene blue, a dye contraindicated for spinal use, into her spine and left her with disabling nerve damage; the judgment against pharmacy contractor McKesson was later reversed on appeal.
Siegfried and Jensen attorneys, led by Joseph Steele, were appointed Special Assistant Attorneys General in the Utah Attorney General's action against Eli Lilly, securing a $24 million settlement over the company's decade-long campaign to push its antipsychotic Zyprexa to Medicaid patients for conditions the FDA had never approved.
Dominick Tenuto of Staten Island, New York, contracted paralytic polio in 1979 after his five-month-old daughter was given Lederle Laboratories' live oral polio vaccine, Orimune, and the shed virus reached him through a fresh surgical wound while he cared for her. The polio left him a permanent paraplegic. He sued Lederle for failing to warn physicians that a vaccinated child could shed live virus and infect an unvaccinated adult in close contact, a case that took 28 years to reach trial and produced a 1997 New York Court of Appeals ruling on a pediatrician's duty to warn parents. In March 2009 a Richmond County jury found Lederle liable and awarded $22.5 million. The trial court denied Lederle's motion to set aside or reduce the verdict and entered judgment for the full amount on February 17, 2010. No later appellate decision in the case has been published.
A Harris County jury awarded about $21 million to Santiago Arias, a construction worker paralyzed from the chest down after falling roughly 20 feet at a Houston job site where his employer had provided no fall-protection equipment or safety training.
A federal jury awarded roughly $18.3 million to musician Dax Pierson after a defective seat restraint in a 2005 Ford passenger van separated during a rollover, driving his head into the roof and leaving him paralyzed from the chest down.
After a New York City Transit Authority bus struck and dragged Gloria Aguilar in Manhattan, costing her a leg, Gair Gair Conason won her a $27.5 million verdict, later cut to roughly $18 million on appeal.
A Dallas County jury awarded $17.5 million to David Fitzgerald, a former maintenance worker who lost both arms and both legs after his infectious disease physician administered eight ineffective antibiotics while never prescribing the one drug that would have stopped his MRSA infection.
A six-year-old girl suffered cardiac arrest and permanent brain damage when a surgeon used a morcellator he had never operated during a routine spleen removal, and the case settled for $17.3 million, the largest sum reported to the Wisconsin Law Journal in 2009.
A Sacramento jury awarded $16,577,118 to the family of Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old mother of three who died of water intoxication after competing in KDND radio's 'Hold Your Wee for a Wii' contest, at the time the largest wrongful-death verdict in Sacramento County.
Richard Adler and co-counsel Mike Nelson secured a $14.6 million settlement for Zackery Lystedt, a 13-year-old Tahoma Junior High football player left with catastrophic brain damage after coaches returned him to play following a concussion in October 2006.
A Tulare County jury awarded $13,284,363 to a nineteen-year-old Farmersville woman who suffered permanent traumatic brain injury and hemiparesis when a multi-vehicle chain-reaction crash sent an oncoming car into her lane.
A Middlesex County jury found that a Perth Amboy oral surgeon committed malpractice by extracting a 21-year-old man's wisdom teeth without first obtaining medical clearance, despite knowing the patient had a hereditary condition that made routine dental trauma dangerous. Twelve hours after the August 2005 surgery, the patient's throat swelled shut and he suffocated. The jury cleared the referring family dentist and awarded the man's family more than $11 million against the oral surgeon. David Mazie of Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman represented the family at trial.
A Maricopa County jury awarded $11 million to the widow of a brain-injured man who died after ingesting plastic bags, condiment packets, and other foreign objects while left unsupervised at a Phoenix assisted living facility.
Patrick Sweeney, a 34-year-old computer salesman, was killed in August 2006 when the car service driving him to Newark Liberty International Airport lost control on the New Jersey Turnpike near the Route 80 interchange in Bergen County and struck a guardrail that pierced the passenger compartment. His widow, Kristin Sweeney, sued the contractor that built the guardrail, the engineering firms involved in its design and oversight, and the limousine company, arguing the guardrail had not been built to the specifications required by its design. Attorney Bruce Nagel represented the family. After a three-year fight the case settled in 2009 for a combined $9.75 million paid by four defendants, $4 million of it in a settlement with the contractor and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority. A separate, previously dismissed claim against the guardrail's end-terminal manufacturer, Trinity Highway Industries, was not part of the settlement.
In March 2009 a federal jury in Iowa found that flavoring maker Givaudan Flavors Corp. failed to warn of the dangers of inhaling diacetyl and awarded about $7.5 million to Ronald Kuiper and his wife, Conley. Kuiper, a butter flavor mixer at a Sioux City microwave popcorn plant, had bronchiolitis obliterans and died the day before the verdict. About $6 million of the award went to him and $1.5 million to his wife.
A Texas county court at law jury found a design defect in the handling of a 1996 Ford Explorer that rolled over after a rear tire lost its tread in July 2003, killing Diane Wiles. The jury put one-third of the responsibility on Ford, one-third on the driver and one-third on Ms. Wiles, and the court entered a judgment of $7,370,197.16 in actual damages. The Dallas Court of Appeals reversed in 2011 for lack of evidence of a safer alternative design.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.