Largest Personal Injury Recoveries Confirmed Paid of 2016
Personal injury results from 2016, nationwide where the record shows the money was paid, or the defendant is an insurer or institution that pays, ranked by amount.
- $15 millionVerdictPaid
DeKalb County Jury Awards $15 Million Over Blood Draw That Left Patient Paralyzed
Cris Nelson lost consciousness during a routine blood draw at an Emory Healthcare clinic in 2012 and fell from the exam table where he had been seated without support, breaking his neck and leaving him a quadriplegic. Emory Healthcare admitted liability for the fall before trial, so the case that went before a DeKalb County jury in spring 2016 was limited to the value of the injury. On May 3, 2016, the jury awarded $15 million: $12 million to Nelson and $3 million to his wife, Deborah, for loss of consortium. No appeal turned up in any source reviewed.
After trial: No appeal, appellate opinion, or later ruling in the case turned up in any source reviewed, so the verdict is treated as final; no Georgia appellate decision under this caption was located. Collectability is listed as paid because the defendant, Emory Healthcare, is a large, institutionally backed academic health system that had already admitted liability before trial, not because a source confirmed the payment itself.
- $4.75 millionSettlementPaid
$4.75 Million Settlement With University of California Over Cal Football Player's Death After Workout
Cal football lineman Ted Agu, 21, died on Feb. 7, 2014 after a team conditioning workout, despite carrying sickle cell trait known to the program. His parents sued, and the University of California admitted liability. In April 2016 it settled for $4.75 million and agreed to athletics safety reforms and a permanent memorial in the team locker room.
After trial: The university admitted liability in court papers about three months before the April 2016 settlement, and no appeal followed. The settlement was paid by the University of California, a public institution, and came with binding safety reforms for Cal athletics.
The Yerrid Law Firm and Panish Shea Ravipudi LLP2016 · Alameda County Superior Court, OaklandRead the full story → - $3.78 millionVerdictReduced from $3.9 millionPaid
Idaho Supreme Court Affirms $3.8 Million Verdict Over Improper Catheter Removal
A nurse at St. Luke's Magic Valley Regional Medical Center in Twin Falls, Idaho, removed a central venous catheter from patient Joyce Herrett while she sat upright in a wheelchair in December 2013, letting air enter her bloodstream and causing a stroke. St. Luke's admitted before trial that the nurse breached the standard of care, so a nine-day jury trial in Twin Falls County focused on whether her conduct was reckless and what Herrett's injuries were worth. The jury found the conduct reckless, which kept Idaho's cap on noneconomic damages from applying, and returned a verdict of $3,850,004.83; the parties later stipulated to a reduction reflecting medical expense adjustments, and the court entered an amended judgment of $3,775,864.21. The Idaho Supreme Court affirmed the judgment on September 6, 2018, rejecting St. Luke's challenges to the jury instructions and the denial of a mistrial. Jarom A. Whitehead of Pedersen and Whitehead argued the case for the Herretts.
After trial: Reduced and paid. The $3,850,004.83 verdict was reduced by stipulation to $3,775,864.21 for contractual medical adjustments, and the Idaho Supreme Court affirmed on September 6, 2018.
Pedersen Whitehead & Hanby2016 · District Court of the Fifth Judicial District, Twin Falls CountyRead the full story → - $1.58 millionVerdictPaid
Jefferson Parish Jury Awards $1.58 Million After Distracted-Driving Rear-End Crash
A Jefferson Parish jury awarded Jasmine Raymond $1,582,399.87 after a company truck driver, distracted by his phone's GPS, rear-ended her on Interstate 10 in 2014 and drove her car into the vehicle ahead, sandwiching it between the two. The 24-year-old plaintiff had no prior back or neck problems before the crash and went through numerous procedures and surgeries over the next two years, ending with an August 2016 diagnosis of a recurrent disc herniation at L4-5 with right leg radiculopathy and a treating physician's opinion that she would need two lumbar fusion surgeries over her lifetime. After both sides rested, the judge granted a directed verdict on liability, so the twelve jurors decided only medical causation and the size of the award. The defendants appealed on evidentiary and damages grounds but withdrew the appeal the day before oral argument, and the Louisiana Fifth Circuit dismissed it without ruling, leaving the full verdict intact.
After trial: Appeal dismissed. The defendants appealed the October 11, 2016 judgment, then moved to dismiss their own appeal on September 6, 2017, and the Fifth Circuit granted it on September 8, 2017 without reaching the merits.
82 results, largest first
A Dallas federal jury awarded $1.04 billion to six California patients harmed by Johnson and Johnson's metal-on-metal Pinnacle hip implants, with W. Mark Lanier leading an eight-week trial that produced one of the largest product-liability verdicts of 2016.
After Amtrak Train 188 derailed in Philadelphia in May 2015, killing eight and injuring more than 200, Kline & Specter's Thomas R. Kline led the plaintiffs' negotiations that produced a $265 million settlement fund for the victims.
A Bronx jury in February 2016 awarded $183 million to five FDNY firefighters and the families of those killed after the city was found 80% liable for removing personal safety ropes years before a 2005 Bronx tenement fire that forced six firefighters to jump from a fourth-floor window.
Francisco Briones, 21, was turning left on a green light on his way to a 5 a.m. warehouse shift in Oxnard on March 23, 2013, when Christopher Zink, drunk at 0.14 percent, awake for 24 hours and asleep at the wheel, ran a red light at about 50 mph and hit him. Briones' C4-5 vertebrae ruptured and he was paralyzed from the neck down. Zink pleaded guilty to felony DUI causing injury and went to prison for seven years; his insurer, Nationwide, had refused a timely policy-limits demand. On January 22, 2016, a Ventura County jury found Zink 100 percent at fault, found malice, and awarded $125,168,202, half of it punitive damages. The court rejected Zink's Proposition 213 motion to strip the pain-and-suffering award but reduced the judgment post-trial to about $85 million.
Two former Jackson County Courthouse employees sued U.S. Engineering Co. and Jackson County over asbestos dust that spread through the courthouse during a mid-1980s renovation, after a co-worker died of mesothelioma. A trial judge refused to certify a class, and in March 2015 the Missouri Court of Appeals reversed that ruling and reinstated the case. A jury had been selected for an October 2016 trial in Jackson County Circuit Court when the parties settled for $80 million, funded by U.S. Engineering's insurers rather than county tax dollars. The settlement set aside $25 million for attorneys' fees and litigation costs and put the remainder into a medical monitoring fund covering diagnostic testing for up to 7,500 people who worked in or spent significant time in the courthouse. Louis C. Accurso represented the plaintiffs.
A 12-year-old Cleveland girl suffered a profound brain injury and partial limb loss after touching an energized, downed Cleveland Electric Illuminating power line that had been left unrepaired for days following Hurricane Sandy; her family settled all claims for $60.7 million, the largest individual personal injury settlement in Ohio history.
A Davidson County jury awarded Fox Sports reporter Erin Andrews $55 million after finding that the Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt negligently disclosed her room location to a stalker who altered a peephole to film her without consent.
Geoffrey Fieger and Jack Beam won the largest birth-injury verdict in Cook County history against the University of Chicago Medical Center, after a mother in fetal distress was left without an obstetrician for hours before an emergency cesarean.
A Cook County jury found that staff at University of Chicago Medical Center let a newborn boy go without an emergency cesarean section for roughly 11 hours despite a non-reassuring fetal heart tracing, leaving him with severe hypoxic brain damage and cerebral palsy. On June 29, 2016, after nearly a month of trial, the jury awarded the family $53 million, broken down across past and future medical costs, lifelong caretaking, lost earning capacity, and pain and suffering. The hospital sought a mistrial over alleged misconduct by plaintiff's counsel; a Cook County judge denied that motion in December 2016 and instead trimmed the award by $950,000, entering judgment at $52,050,000. The hospital said it would appeal further, and no independent source confirms what became of that appeal.
Feldman Shepherd secured a combined $50 million settlement from IKEA on behalf of three families whose toddler sons were fatally crushed by MALM dressers, a result that preceded a nationwide recall of approximately 29 million chests and dressers.
A St. Louis jury awarded $46.5 million to three plaintiffs who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma after PCB exposure, delivering the first plaintiff verdict of its kind against Monsanto in the city.
On September 10, 2013, Faustino Torres Solorio was standing at the tailgate of a truck that had run out of gas and pulled onto the shoulder in San Bernardino County when a car driven by Gunnar Ayala, a parts delivery driver for Nissan of Fontana, struck him. Ayala was cited for an unsafe turning movement, and the officer at the scene concluded Solorio did nothing to cause the crash. He suffered multiple broken bones, deep lacerations, a lacerated spleen and an above-the-knee amputation of his left leg. The dealerships argued Ayala was an independent contractor, or at least outside the course and scope of his job at the moment of the crash. A San Bernardino County Superior Court jury found otherwise and awarded Solorio $46 million on August 9, 2016. No appeal has surfaced in the years since.
A Los Angeles jury awarded $45 million to the four children of Claudia Fernandez after a drunk driver, whose vehicle owner negligently handed over her keys, struck and killed her at a Boyle Heights taco truck in 2012.
A Philadelphia jury awarded Andrea Tate $44.1 million after the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania stopped monitoring her blood-clotting levels mid-treatment, allowing heparin to build to a dangerous concentration that caused a massive brain hemorrhage following routine tumor surgery.
A Hernando County jury awarded $41.9 million to Patrick Osmond, who was rendered quadriplegic when a pickup truck crashed after Applebee's served him and his companions a pitcher of beer despite none of them being 21.
A King County jury awarded $38 million to Thyce Colyn, a commuter cyclist who suffered permanent brain damage and a shattered pelvis after a Standard Parking valet driver struck him while cutting illegally across 8th Avenue in downtown Seattle.
A Jackson County jury awarded $37.5 million to Steven Holdeman, who was left a paraplegic after a semi-truck rear-ended his car on Interstate 435, finding Philip Stratman 99 percent at fault for stalling his vehicle in the center lane.
A Gwinnett County jury awarded $30.5 million in November 2016 after finding that Gwinnett Medical Center and an attending physician failed to act on an ultrasound showing abnormal fetal blood flow at 35 weeks, delaying an emergency C-section long enough to deprive a newborn of oxygen and cause permanent spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy.
Romanucci and Blandin recovered $30 million for a family whose infant son suffered permanent brain damage and cerebral palsy after a pediatric surgeon at Rush University Medical Center performed 25 experimental surgeries, severing the child's pulmonary artery during the final operation.
Robert Mongeluzzi secured a then-record $26.55 million Philadelphia County settlement for David Williams, a TruGreen lawn-care worker who was left quadriplegic after a company truck rolled over on a Clinton County highway due to a bald tire the defendants had failed to replace even after their own inspection flagged it.
A 27-year-old Bay Area woman suffered permanent paralysis after an Acura dealership employee, acting as a self-appointed Good Samaritan, forced her vehicle off I-680 and into a catastrophic rollover; the case settled for $24 million, the largest personal-injury settlement in Northern California for 2016.
August de los Reyes, head of design for Microsoft's Xbox, was left permanently paralyzed from the chest down after Overlake Hospital staff failed to diagnose his spinal fracture across four emergency visits, and Luvera Law Firm secured a $20 million settlement that also required the hospital to partner with him on patient-safety reform.
A Cobb County jury awarded $20 million after a tractor-trailer ran a red light in Kennesaw and left a 57-year-old Pakistani immigrant with permanent, catastrophic brain damage.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.