Top Personal Injury Settlements of 2012

A Gainesville jury awarded $900 million, including $700 million in punitive damages, to stroke survivor Joseph Webb over neglect at the University Place Care and Rehabilitation Center, in a Wilkes & McHugh case tried against defaulted Trans Healthcare entities with no defense present, but Florida's First District Court of Appeal reversed the judgment in 2013 because the trial court had refused to let a defense lawyer appear, and the money was never collected; the estate's claim was later resolved for a small share of a multi-estate bankruptcy settlement.

A Pinellas County jury awarded $60 million in compensatory and $140 million in punitive damages over the death of 92-year-old Elvira Nunziata, who tumbled down a stairwell still strapped in her wheelchair at the Pinellas Park Care and Rehab Center, in a Wilkes & McHugh case where the defunct operator Trans Health Management presented no defense at all, meaning the record-setting sum was symbolic from the start; the estate later recovered only a share of a modest multi-estate bankruptcy settlement.

Schochor, Federico and Staton, P.A. represented the largest single group of plaintiffs in a $123 million class-action settlement against Beebe Medical Center for institutional failures that allowed pediatrician Earl Bradley to abuse hundreds of children over 15 years.

A Bronx jury awarded $120 million to Jacqueline Martin, a 45-year-old mother who suffered permanent brain damage after three New York City hospitals repeatedly failed to recognize and treat a severe allergic reaction to seizure medication that triggered Stevens-Johnson Syndrome.

A Jackson County jury returned a $108.6 million verdict for the parents of a woman who died from sepsis after her husband's religious group prevented her from receiving medical care during a botched home birth.

An Allegheny County jury found West Penn Power negligent for the splice failure that dropped a live 7,200-volt line on Carrie Goretzka in her own backyard. The 2012 verdict reached $109 million. The utility later paid a reported $105 million to drop its appeal.

A federal jury in Portland awarded $85 million to 12 Oregon Army National Guard soldiers after finding that contractor KBR knowingly exposed them to a carcinogenic chemical at an Iraqi water treatment plant and then lied about the danger.

A Philadelphia jury found Pottstown Memorial Medical Center liable for a newborn's severe spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy after the hospital's outdated, unmaintained ultrasound equipment led a physician to incorrectly declare the baby dead, delaying an emergency cesarean section by 81 minutes.

A Cook County jury awarded $64 million to Ronald Bayer, a union ironworker paralyzed from the neck down after falling 15 feet at a Panduit Corp. warehouse construction site in DeKalb, Illinois, at the time the largest verdict ever returned for a quadriplegic in Illinois.

A federal jury in Montgomery awarded $64.1 million to Lucky Palace LLC and 15 Macon County charities after finding VictoryLand owner Milton McGregor conspired to freeze out a competing electronic bingo operation.

Maurice Graham of Gray, Ritter and Graham secured a $55 million class action settlement in Doyle v. Fluor for Herculaneum, Missouri homeowners whose properties were contaminated by lead emissions from the Doe Run smelter.

A Baltimore City jury awarded $55 million after Johns Hopkins Hospital delayed an emergency cesarean section for more than two hours following a home-birth transfer, leaving infant Enzo Martinez with permanent cerebral palsy and profound neurological injuries.

After the U.S. Supreme Court's 2009 Wyeth v. Levine decision cleared the way for pharmaceutical failure-to-warn suits, Tim Misny assembled a second large block of Ohio plaintiffs harmed by a drug whose labeling omitted warnings about increased cancer risk, and secured a $50 million settlement in October 2012 as co-counsel in the related coordinated litigation.

A Newport Beach hotel guest fell two stories from a balcony with a railing eight inches below California building code height, suffered a skull fracture and catastrophic traumatic brain injury, and an Orange County jury returned a $38,628,127 verdict against the hotel in 2012.

Feldman Shepherd secured a $26.1 million settlement for the family of a man killed and a husband left with a traumatic brain injury when a tractor-trailer hit stopped traffic on Interstate 80 at more than 70 mph.

A Nueces County jury awarded Vanice Chatman-Wilson $24 million, including $10 million in punitive damages, after a Coca-Cola employee on a hands-free business call turned left into oncoming traffic and crushed Chatman-Wilson's car at a downtown Corpus Christi intersection.

William Coultas, the copilot who survived a 2008 helicopter crash that killed nine people on the Iron Complex fire in Northern California, sued General Electric over the engine's fuel control unit after suffering severe burns. A Multnomah County jury in Portland found GE 57 percent at fault on March 27, 2012 and awarded $42,000,000 to Coultas and his wife as part of a $70,455,000 verdict that also compensated the pilot's estate. Because Oregon makes defendants severally liable for their own share of fault, the couple's judgment was entered at $23,940,000. GE said it would appeal, and court records show the judgment was still on appeal in August 2013. A later federal opinion states the plaintiffs ultimately settled with all of the defendants.

A Los Angeles jury awarded $23 million in December 2012 after finding that LAUSD ignored repeated warning signs while a fifth-grade teacher molested a ten-year-old student dozens of times over the course of a school year.

A Baltimore City jury returned a $21 million verdict against MedStar Harbor Hospital after physicians failed to perform a timely emergency cesarean section during a premature delivery, causing a newborn to suffer oxygen deprivation and permanent spastic diplegic cerebral palsy.

A Cook County judge approved an $18.5 million settlement for Gabriela Cedillo, a 24-year-old extra who suffered catastrophic brain damage when a snapped tow cable tore through her windshield during filming of Transformers: Dark of the Moon in Hammond, Indiana.

Leroy Rice, a forklift operator, was left permanently paralyzed on September 18, 2001, when a storage racking system at his Philadelphia warehouse job collapsed and dropped roughly a ton of frozen food on him. A Philadelphia jury awarded him $12,400,000 at a second trial in 2010, after the Superior Court reversed the first trial's judgment and ordered a new trial on damages, and the trial court molded that verdict to $17,339,797.30 to add delay damages. The Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed the judgment against racking manufacturer Interlake Material Handling Inc. on February 22, 2012, according to contemporaneous legal-press coverage. Thomas J. Duffy Jr. is named in the trial court's opinion as counsel for Rice.

Douglas Burchfield, a General Mills employee at the company's cereal plant in Covington, Georgia, suffered the partial amputation of both legs when a loaded railcar rolled loose and ran him over during a routine railcar switch in June 2005. He sued CSX Transportation, which had delivered the car, arguing it put the car into service with a defective handbrake. A first jury cleared CSX, but the 11th Circuit reversed after finding the trial court had improperly let CSX show the jury a reenactment video, and a retrial jury found Burchfield zero percent negligent, CSX 100 percent negligent, and awarded him $20,559,004. CSX appealed, and while that appeal was pending the parties settled the claim for $16 million, which CSX paid.

A Kauai judge found Hawaii totally at fault after a state-posted warning sign at the left trail entrance near Opaeka'a Falls left the right-hand path, which ended at a sheer 300-foot cliff, completely unmarked, sending two visiting women to their deaths.

A corner iron that broke loose from a Lion Raisins semi-trailer on Highway 99 shot through Susan Reyes' windshield and into her brain, leaving the Fresno schoolteacher with catastrophic, permanent injuries; Richard Watters secured a jury verdict of $11,876,655.82.