Top Personal Injury Settlements 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.

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 Hillsborough County jury returned a $64.5 million verdict for Robert Matthews, a young construction worker left permanently disabled after an 11,000-pound prefabricated building shifted and collapsed on him at a Mosaic fertilizer company mine site.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 Broward County jury awarded $24 million to the widower of Alana DeMella, a seven-months-pregnant hotel guest killed when a drunk driver crashed into a pool cabana at the Riverside Hotel in Fort Lauderdale in 2012.

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.

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.

David Long tripped on two inches of exposed trolley track left by construction grinding crews at the 12th and Imperial MTS station and suffered a spinal cord injury that left him quadriplegic; the case settled for $21.5 million.

Michael Parsons, a Norfolk Southern conductor, had his left foot crushed between two railcars at the company's 51st/55th Street yard in Chicago after 2010 track work narrowed the clearance between two adjacent tracks to as little as 10 feet 6 inches. A Cook County jury found Parsons zero percent negligent and awarded $22,474,102 in November 2015. The trial court ordered a $1 million remittitur from the lost-earnings portion of the award, which Parsons accepted, reducing the judgment to $21,474,102. The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed that judgment in August 2017, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied Norfolk Southern's petition for further review in October 2018.

In the summer of 2015, after an eleven month trial over the May 30, 2008 tower crane collapse on East 91st Street in Manhattan, a jury held crane owner James Lomma, New York Crane & Equipment Corp., and J.F. Lomma, Inc. liable for the deaths of construction worker Ramadan Kurtaj, 27, and crane operator Donald Leo, 30. The awards against the Lomma defendants for Kurtaj's estate came to $55.5 million: $7.5 million for preimpact terror, $24 million for conscious pain and suffering, and $24 million in punitive damages, part of roughly $96 million in combined verdicts for the two families. Susan M. Karten of Susan M. Karten & Associates was trial counsel for the Kurtaj family. On September 12, 2017 the Appellate Division, First Department found the awards excessive and reduced the Kurtaj figures to $2 million, $7.5 million, and $9.5 million, a total of $19 million, and the Leo figures to $16 million, cutting the combined awards to about $35 million.

A Colorado jury delivered what was then the state's largest medical malpractice verdict after a four-day-old girl suffered cardiac arrest and permanent brain damage when hospital staff administered an incorrect prostaglandin dose before congenital heart surgery.

A Pierce County jury awarded $16.7 million to the family of a pregnant Puyallup woman who died of H1N1 influenza after Summit View Clinic failed to tell her that Tamiflu was available to treat the infection. Ashton Dennis of Washington Law Center served as co-counsel for the family alongside Connelly Law Offices.