Largest Group Settlements and Injury Recovery Funds of 2015

Sol Weiss and Larry Coben of Anapol Weiss served as co-lead class counsel in the landmark NFL concussion multidistrict litigation, securing a settlement valued at nearly $1 billion for thousands of retired players diagnosed with serious neurological conditions.

Steven Marks and Ricardo Martinez-Cid of Podhurst Orseck served on the NFL Concussion Litigation Plaintiffs' Executive Committee, helping negotiate an uncapped settlement projected to exceed $1 billion for more than 20,000 retired players suffering traumatic brain injuries.

A Santa Fe jury awarded $165.5 million, the largest verdict in New Mexico history, to the survivors of a young mother and her daughter killed when a FedEx tractor-trailer plowed into their stopped pickup at highway speed on Interstate 10.

A Houston jury awarded $159 million to five oilfield workers burned, and the family of one man killed, in a 2012 liquid-fire explosion at Valero Energy's Memphis, Tennessee refinery.

Dr. Trent Pierce, then chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board, found a spare tire propped against his car on the morning of 4 February 2009. A hand grenade was duct-taped to it, rigged to fire when the tire was moved. He lost the sight in his left eye and the hearing in his left ear. The man who sent him there was a physician whose prescribing authority the board had revoked.

A Philadelphia jury awarded $46.5 million, including $38.5 million in punitive damages, against U.S. Security Associates after its guards fled rather than warn workers during the 2010 Kraft plant shooting that killed Tanya Wilson and LaTonya Brown. Kline & Specter's Shanin Specter, Dominic Guerrini, and Patrick Fitzgerald tried the case.

A Starr County, Texas jury awarded $41.1 million to the family of seaman Jose Flores, who died after being bitten by a brown recluse spider while working aboard a dredging vessel, on maritime claims of unseaworthiness and negligence against the vessel operator. The case later settled for $10 million.

Jeb Butler co-tried the first Jeep rear-fuel-tank wrongful-death case to a Georgia jury, which returned a $150 million verdict in 2015 later affirmed at $40 million by the Georgia Supreme Court in 2018.

A St. Louis jury returned a $38 million verdict against Abbott Laboratories for failing to adequately warn patients and physicians that Depakote, taken during pregnancy to control epilepsy, could cause severe birth defects including spina bifida.

One hundred twenty-nine former Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory workers, most of them over 50, shared a $37.25 million settlement after a series of jury trials established that the lab breached their employment contracts during a 2008 mass layoff that followed privatization of the facility.

A Norfolk Superior Court jury awarded Andrea Larkin $35.4 million after finding that Dedham Medical Associates failed to document a known brain abnormality, leaving her obstetrician unaware of a condition that made vaginal delivery dangerous.

On January 29, 2015, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury awarded $34,555,220 to Alan Casillas, who was 19 when a Landstar Ranger tractor-trailer drove over a South Los Angeles sidewalk during a right turn and crushed his left leg, which was amputated below the knee. Landstar admitted negligence at the start of trial, so the jury decided only damages. The verdict was unanimous and was followed by a confidential settlement.

A Lake County jury awarded Kristen Zak $32.5 million after a J.B. Hunt Transport semi-truck jackknifed in the median of Interstate 65 during a snowstorm and was left without warning triangles, and the car she was riding in struck the wreck about an hour later, leaving her with permanent brain damage.

Hoyt Tessener of Martin and Jones, joined by co-counsel Kent Emison, secured a $31 million settlement for a boy left paraplegic when a two-point rear lap belt in a 1999 Ford Escort jackknifed him during a crash, while other occupants of the same car came away with comparatively minor injuries.

A jury awarded Florence Kuhlmann $79.8 million after an Ethicon PPH03 hemorrhoid stapler from a defective, recalled lot misfired during surgery, occluding her rectum and leaving her with a permanent colostomy.

A Harris County jury awarded $29 million to the family of Garland 'Rickie' Kelley, an oilfield services worker killed when a lithium thionyl chloride battery exploded at a Professional Directional Enterprises facility in Conroe, Texas.

C. Steven Yerrid, retained as Tampa's special counsel, secured a $27.4 million settlement from BP for economic damages the city sustained after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest BP payout to any single U.S. municipality.

Jeremy Vangsnes, a 21-year-old cross-country athlete who was left quadriplegic and brain-injured after a 2009 rollover on Interstate 90 near Belgrade, Montana, settled for $26 million against the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention after a judge ruled the driver was acting within the scope of his agency with the organization.

Stephen Wells was engulfed in flames on Memorial Day weekend 2010 when gas from an uncapped line in the Sandy Springs apartment he was moving into ignited as he stepped inside. He suffered burns covering more than half his body and was treated in the burn unit at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. A Fulton County jury found the complex's owner, Aslan Commons, LLC, and its manager, WSE LLC, fully responsible and awarded $17.9 million in compensatory damages, $7.16 million in attorney's fees, and $47.9 million in punitive damages, a total of about $73 million. The trial judge then applied Georgia's statutory cap to reduce the punitive award to $250,000, bringing the enforceable judgment to about $25.4 million.

A Lake County jury awarded $25 million to Patricia Amsden after her husband Phillip was struck and killed on Interstate 65 by a driver with a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit, holding the driver, his employer, and two bars that served him accountable.

A Wayne County jury awarded $22.6 million to port truck driver Burt Holt, who suffered a traumatic brain injury and permanent disability when a negligent driver struck him while he inspected his trailer at a Detroit shipping terminal in 2011.

A Riverside jury awarded $40 million to the parents of Orlando Jordan after finding that TGI Friday's and its franchise operator bore 55 percent of the responsibility for his death, having repeatedly served alcohol to a visibly intoxicated underage patron who then stabbed Jordan inside the restaurant.

Michael Farley, a Navy veteran, was left permanently conscious but nearly paralyzed after the Manchester VA failed to properly evaluate and treat his first stroke, allowing a second, massive stroke to occur six weeks later.

A federal jury in Seattle awarded $21.5 million, including $16.5 million in punitive damages, to an Illinois businessman struck in the head by an automatic sliding-glass door aboard Holland America's M/S Amsterdam in 2011. In January 2016 the judge vacated the verdict and ordered a new trial after his former assistant said he had deleted emails sought in discovery. Nothing stood, and in June 2016 the parties stipulated to dismiss the case with prejudice on terms that were not made public.