Largest Personal Injury Verdicts Never Collected of 2017

Cory Watson's Jon Conlin, a co-lead lawyer on the plaintiffs' steering committee, helped drive DuPont and Chemours to a $670.7 million global settlement resolving about 3,550 C-8 water-contamination cancer and injury claims.

An L.A. jury awarded Eva Echeverria $417 million after finding that decades of Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder use caused her ovarian cancer, though the trial judge later vacated the verdict and the Court of Appeal affirmed the vacatur.

A Merrimack County jury awarded $274.5 million against mortgage company owner Michael Gill for a years-long campaign of electronic billboards, radio broadcasts, and social media posts falsely branding three prominent Manchester businessmen as drug dealers and extortionists, a verdict affirmed by the New Hampshire Supreme Court in September 2018.

A Dallas federal jury awarded six New York patients $247 million against Johnson and Johnson and its DePuy unit, finding that the metal-on-metal Pinnacle hip implant system was defectively designed and that the company concealed known risks from patients and surgeons.

A Las Vegas jury awarded hedge fund manager David Moradi $160.5 million after Cosmopolitan security personnel beat him at the Marquee nightclub and left him with a traumatic brain injury, and a confidential settlement followed during deliberations on punitive damages.

A Cook County jury awarded Tierney Darden $148 million after a 750-pound pedestrian shelter toppled onto her at O'Hare and severed her spine, a record the city later settled for $115 million.

After an unbraced brick wall toppled during a 2013 Center City demolition and crushed a Salvation Army store, Kline & Specter's Andrew J. Stern secured a $95.6 million award for survivor Mariya Plekan, the largest individual share of a record $227 million settlement.

A Cook County jury awarded $95.5 million to a truck driver who lost both legs when improperly loaded carbon steel bundles fell from a crane during unloading, with a 10% comparative fault reduction bringing the net award to $85.9 million, the highest double-amputation verdict in Illinois history.

Cohen & Malad's Irwin Levin secured a $62 million class action settlement in 2017 after proving the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles had knowingly overcharged 5.5 million drivers across more than 100 fee categories for over a decade.

A Los Angeles judge awarded $60 million to three female taekwondo athletes who were sexually abused by their coach for seven years, a case that later prompted the California Supreme Court to hold that national sports governing bodies owe a legal duty to protect athletes from abuse.

A Philadelphia jury found that Ethicon's TVT and TVT-Secur mesh slings were defectively designed and awarded Ella Ebaugh $57.1 million, including $50 million in punitive damages, then the largest verdict in the city's pelvic mesh mass tort program. Kila Baldwin of Kline & Specter tried the case.

After a speeding BMW rear-ended a mother and her four children stopped at an Ocala red light, a Marion County jury awarded the family nearly $52 million, reported as the largest verdict in the county's history.

A Gloucester County jury awarded $45 million after finding that emergency room physicians missed a two-month-old's femur fracture and never reported it as suspected abuse, three weeks before the same infant suffered a catastrophic brain injury at his father's hands.

A Wayne County jury found the Detroit Medical Center liable for the death of 26-year-old Terrea Holly, whose pulmonary embolism was treated as a virus and sent home from the emergency room.

A San Bernardino jury awarded $36.1 million to a child who suffered a traumatic brain injury and multiple fractures after being struck by a car while crossing mid-block to reach her school bus stop, finding Durham School Services 80% liable for failing to prevent the dangerous crossing.

A Cook County jury awarded $33.4 million to the estates of three lawyers shot and killed at a downtown Chicago office tower after finding the building's security company failed to stop a known threat from reaching the 38th floor.

A Tennessee jury awarded Milan Supply Chain Solutions $30.8 million after finding that Navistar fraudulently concealed known defects in the MaxxForce diesel engines installed in 243 heavy-duty trucks it sold to the carrier; the verdict was later reversed by the Tennessee Supreme Court on economic-loss-doctrine grounds.

A Hamilton County jury returned a verdict of nearly $28 million against Utilimap Corp. after the firm's inspectors skipped a rotted utility pole that collapsed and killed Duke Energy lineman Keith Jester in 2014.

A Dallas County jury returned a $26.5 million verdict for Fernando Canales, a construction decker left paraplegic after a two-story fall, finding that general contractor RJC Midwest bore full responsibility for failing to train subcontractors on the proper use of fall-protection equipment.

A Los Angeles jury found a defective brake sensor in a 2004 Infiniti QX56 caused the 2012 Hollywood crash that killed a mother and her two daughters, and the $25 million verdict was later upheld on appeal.

Phyllis Rivers, pregnant, was treated at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage. Her doctors noted at least three indicators of infective endocarditis, rejected that diagnosis in favor of pregnancy-induced vasculitis, stopped her antibiotics after four days and sent her home. Untreated, the infection caused a stroke that left her paralyzed. After a bench trial under the Federal Tort Claims Act the court entered a $22,000,000 judgment against the United States and found the doctors reckless, which lifted Alaska's $400,000 malpractice cap. The Ninth Circuit affirmed in 2018.

E.M. was a boarding student at the Yeshiva of New Haven from 2001 to 2005, and from age 14 to 17 the school's rabbi and chief administrator, Daniel Greer, sexually abused him on a frequent, sometimes weekly basis. In May 2017 a federal jury in Connecticut awarded E.M. $15 million against Greer and the school, and on June 6, 2017 the court entered a $21,749,041.10 judgment after adding $5 million in punitive damages and $1.75 million in offer-of-compromise interest. The Second Circuit affirmed in full on March 3, 2020, rejecting the argument that the award was excessive. Greer was separately convicted and sent to prison; by 2021 less than $240,000 of the judgment had been collected, and E.M.'s collection suits against Greer's real-estate nonprofits were resolved privately in 2024.

Walkup attorney Matthew Davis represented the families of five Irish students killed and seven survivors injured when a Berkeley apartment balcony sheared off in 2015, reaching a partial settlement of more than $20 million on confidential terms.

A Monmouth County jury awarded $17 million in October 2017 to a Wall Township family whose seven-year-old daughter suffered permanent brain damage in 2008 after a pediatric pulmonologist removed her from a ventilator before she was weaned off sedation and no one confirmed she was breathing on her own. The case was tried by Paul A. Lauricella of McLaughlin & Lauricella, P.C., the firm whose lawyers joined Feldman Shepherd in 2024.