Largest Group Settlements and Injury Recovery Funds of 2016

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.

Khaldoun Baghdadi was on the plaintiffs' trial team that won a federal jury verdict topping $1 billion for six California patients harmed by DePuy's metal-on-metal Pinnacle hip implants, an award the trial judge later cut to about $543 million.

A 26-year class action brought by thousands of property owners near Colorado's Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant resulted in a $375 million settlement against Rockwell International and Dow Chemical in 2016, with Paul DeMarco of MSD serving as co-counsel from the litigation's earliest years.

Thornton Law Firm served as liaison counsel on a multi-firm team that secured a $300 million class settlement from State Street Bank on behalf of pension funds and other institutional custodial clients who were secretly overcharged on foreign currency exchange trades for more than a decade.

Robert Mongeluzzi helped secure a $265 million federal settlement on behalf of more than 125 claimants injured or killed when Amtrak Train 188 derailed at 106 mph on a Philadelphia curve in May 2015.

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.

Lambert Zainey represented three former Hanford nuclear site managers who blew the whistle on contractors Bechtel and URS for charging the federal government for deficient nuclear-quality materials and funding illegal lobbying, securing a $125 million False Claims Act settlement in 2016.

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 Nashville jury awarded sportscaster Erin Andrews $55 million in March 2016 after finding that West End Hotel Partners bore 49 percent of liability for a stalker who secretly filmed her through a tampered peephole at the Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt University in 2008.

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.

Wagner Jones Kopfman & Artenian secured a $54.6 million federal jury verdict on behalf of roughly 840 California Walmart truck drivers who went unpaid for mandatory pre- and post-trip vehicle inspections, controlled layovers, and rest breaks spanning more than a decade.

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 found Monsanto liable for polychlorinated biphenyl contamination that caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma in three plaintiffs, awarding $46.5 million in the first PCB cancer case of its kind tried to verdict in St. Louis.

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.

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 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.