Top Personal Injury Recoveries Confirmed Paid of 2018
Personal injury results from 2018, nationwide where the record shows the money was paid, or the defendant is an insurer or institution that pays, ranked by amount.
- $54.35 millionSettlementPaid
Teenager Burned in Philadelphia Food Truck Explosion Settles With U-Haul for $54.35 Million
A propane tank ruptured aboard a Philadelphia food truck on July 1, 2014, killing the truck's owner and her 17-year-old daughter and burning a teenage girl who was helping in the business. Less than a week before the case was set for trial, U-Haul agreed in June 2018 to pay $160 million, plus an additional confidential amount, to resolve the claims of all four victims, with $54.35 million allocated to the girl, identified in press accounts only as Jane Doe because she was still a minor. Plaintiffs' lawyers said her share was the largest settlement ever paid to a minor in Pennsylvania state court history. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that she was represented by lawyers including Thomas J. Duffy. Because she was a minor, the agreement had to be approved by a judge in the Orphans' Court division of the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas.
After trial: Settlement reached before trial and not appealed: As Jane Doe was a minor, it required approval from a Philadelphia Orphans' Court judge. U-Haul said it worked with its insurance carriers to fund the settlement and that all injured parties had been compensated.
The Duffy Firm2018 · Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas, Orphans' Court Division, PennsylvaniaRead the full story → - $20.51 millionVerdictReduced from $289.3 millionPaid
Benicia School Groundskeeper Wins the First Roundup Cancer Verdict Against Monsanto
Dewayne "Lee" Johnson sprayed Monsanto's Ranger Pro and Roundup Pro on Benicia school grounds for two to three years, was soaked by a burst hose in 2014, and was diagnosed that October with mycosis fungoides, a rare non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. In August 2018 a San Francisco jury found Monsanto liable for failure to warn and design defect and returned $289.25 million, the first Roundup cancer verdict in the country. The trial judge cut punitive damages to match compensatory damages, for $78.5 million, and the Court of Appeal in July 2020 reduced the award to $20.5 million while affirming liability and malice. The California Supreme Court denied review in October 2020 and Bayer paid the judgment late that year.
After trial: Reduced twice and paid. The trial court cut punitive damages from $250 million to $39.25 million; the Court of Appeal (July 20, 2020) then reduced future noneconomic damages to $4 million and cut punitive damages to match, leaving $20,506,418.64.
Wisner Baum LLP2018 · San Francisco County Superior Court, San Francisco (Judge Suzanne Ramos Bolanos), Case No. CGC-16-550128Read the full story → - $10.5 millionVerdictReduced from $45.4 millionPaid
Jury Finds Los Angeles County 45 Percent Liable For Failing To Stop Child Sexual Abuse
A Los Angeles County jury found the county's Department of Children and Family Services 45 percent responsible for years of sexual abuse a girl suffered in her El Monte home, returning a $45.4 million verdict in July 2018 and splitting the rest of the fault between the girl's mother and four men who lived in the apartment. Two DCFS social workers had been monitoring the family and knew a man with an arrest record for sexual abuse of a minor was staying there, but never called the county hotline or the police. The county's 45 percent share, about $20.7 million, was later brought down to a $10.5 million judgment, of which the county paid $5.5 million in the 2018 to 2019 fiscal year. David Ring and Louanne Masry represented the girl at trial.
After trial: Reduced and paid in part. The $45.4 million verdict left Los Angeles County liable for about $20.7 million as its 45 percent share, and the county reduced that to a $10.5 million judgment, paying the first $5.5 million in the 2018 to 2019 fiscal year (WitnessLA, January 2020).
- $10 millionSettlementPaid
Family of Man Killed by Drunk Off-Duty Detective Settles With Chicago for $10 Million
Early on April 10, 2009, off-duty Chicago police detective Joseph Frugoli, driving with a blood alcohol level about three times the legal limit, slammed his SUV into a car stopped on the shoulder of the Dan Ryan Expressway with a flat tire. The car caught fire and both occupants, 23-year-old Andrew Cazares and 21-year-old Fausto Manzera, were killed. The families sued Frugoli and the City of Chicago, arguing a departmental 'code of silence' had let Frugoli drink and drive for years without discipline. The city settled in December 2017 during closing arguments, and the Chicago City Council approved the payout on February 28, 2018: $20 million total, split evenly between the two families. Timothy Cavanagh and Michael Sorich were attorneys of record for the Cazares side, which took $10 million; Kevin Conway of Cooney & Conway represented the Manzera family.
After trial: Settlement with the City of Chicago, with no appeal. The Manzera family's separate $10,000,000 share of the same $20,000,000 resolution was negotiated by other counsel and is not part of this figure.
Cavanagh Sorich Law Group LLC2018 · U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division (Manzera v. Frugoli, No. 1:13-cv-05626)Read the full story → - $9.13 millionVerdictReduced from $41.6 millionPaid
New Mexico Mechanic's Mesothelioma Death Brings $9.125 Million Judgment Against Ford
Larry Knecht, a lifelong auto mechanic in Los Alamos, New Mexico, developed mesothelioma from working with Ford's asbestos-containing brakes and clutches and died in December 2014, more than three years before his case reached trial. His widow, Paula Knecht, tried the failure-to-warn claim to a Delaware jury in 2018 against Ford, the only defendant left of the eighteen originally sued. The jury set total compensatory damages at $40,625,000, assigned Ford 20 percent of the fault among twenty compared parties, and added $1,000,000 in punitive damages, putting Ford's total liability at $9,125,000. Ford's appeal reached the Delaware Supreme Court, which sent the case back on a legal technicality about how to measure an excessive verdict, but the trial judge again found the underlying figure sound and the number held. Final judgment of $9,125,000 plus interest was entered in November 2020, and Ford dropped its remaining appeal three months later.
After trial: Reduced and paid. Ford's appeal did not change the amount because the trial judge again found no remittitur warranted, and judgment was entered November 2, 2020 for $9,125,000 plus 15 percent post-judgment interest.
- $6.58 millionVerdictReduced from $8.0 millionPaid
Idaho Falls Man Left Paraplegic After Urgent Care Delay Wins $6.6 Million Verdict
Shane Ackerschott hurt his back lifting freight in November 2014, then suffered a spinal cord injury and permanent paraplegia after an Idaho Falls urgent care clinic had him stand and walk for tests despite worsening neurological symptoms and never told him to restrict his movement. A Bonneville County jury awarded $7,958,113.67 in damages against Mountain View Hospital, LLC, doing business as RediCare. Idaho's cap on noneconomic damages cut the award by stipulation to $6,575,354.58. The Idaho Supreme Court affirmed the judgment in 2020, rejecting RediCare's comparative-fault defense and declining to reach the Ackerschotts' constitutional challenge to the cap on a timeliness ground.
After trial: Reduced and affirmed. The $7,958,113.67 verdict was cut to $6,575,354.58 under Idaho's cap on noneconomic damages, and the Idaho Supreme Court affirmed the judgment on February 6, 2020 without reaching the plaintiffs' constitutional challenge, which was untimely.
Pedersen Whitehead & Hanby2018 · District Court of the Seventh Judicial District, Bonneville County (Idaho Falls)Read the full story → - $6.5 millionSettlementPaid
Chesterfield County Settles Excessive-Force Suit Over Taser That Ignited Crash Victim's Clothing
In February 2015 a Chesterfield County, Virginia police officer fired a Taser at Miles November, a 27-year-old man trapped in a wrecked car soaked in gasoline after a police chase. His clothing ignited and he suffered burns over most of his body, followed by months in the hospital and more than 30 surgeries. He sued the county and the officer in federal court in Richmond. The case settled in 2018 for $6.5 million, paid by the county's commercial insurer and its self-insurance fund.
After trial: The case settled before trial, so there was no verdict or appeal. The county's commercial insurer and its self-insurance fund funded the payment.
Marks & Harrison2018 · U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, RichmondRead the full story → - $3.8 millionVerdictPaid
$3.8 Million D.C. Jury Verdict for IT Security Professional with Brain Injury in Rear-End Crash
In 2012 a McKesson Corporation employee rear-ended Roger Tovar's stopped car, leaving the information technology security professional with a traumatic brain injury that ended his career. A D.C. Superior Court jury awarded $500,000 for bodily injury and $3,297,573 in lost wages in June 2018. McKesson appealed and then settled for the full jury award.
After trial: McKesson appealed, then settled through the court's mediation program for the full jury award, and the Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal. We have not seen the settlement terms beyond that the amount matched the verdict.
Regan Zambri Long Personal Injury Lawyers2018 · Superior Court of the District of ColumbiaRead the full story → - $1.75 millionSettlementPaid
Family of Man Shot by Lynnwood Police Settles Federal Suit for $1.75 Million
On January 30, 2017, Lynnwood police officer Zachary Yates fired ten shots at 36-year-old Jeremy Dowell, a Mountlake Terrace man with mental health issues who was carrying a knife on Highway 99, and killed him. Investigators concluded the shooting was within legal standards and prosecutors declined to charge Yates, but twelve witnesses later signed sworn declarations contradicting the official account, ten of them saying Yates kept firing at a stumbling or already fallen Dowell. Dowell's estate and his parents sued Yates individually for excessive force in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in May 2018. The parties settled on August 31, 2018, and Lynnwood's insurance risk pool paid $1.75 million in late September under the city's obligation to defend the officer, with no admission of wrongdoing.
After trial: Settled at mediation for $1.75 million before any ruling on the merits, so no court decided the excessive-force question. The city's insurance risk pool paid in full in late September 2018, with no admission of wrongdoing.
Budge & Heipt, PLLC2018 · U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, SeattleRead the full story → - $1.29 millionSettlementPaid
Fresno Pays $1.29 Million to Father of Unarmed Teen Shot by Police at a Gas Station
Fresno police officers shot and killed Dylan Noble, an unarmed 19-year-old, at a gas station on June 25, 2016. His father, represented by Warren Paboojian, sued the city in federal court under Section 1983. In August 2018 the Fresno City Council approved a settlement paying the father $1.29 million, with the city making no admission of liability and agreeing to additional officer training on high-risk traffic stops.
After trial: The case settled in August 2018 and both federal lawsuits were dismissed, so there was no appeal. The city denied liability.
Paboojian & Bell2018 · U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California, FresnoRead the full story →
All 2018 verdicts and settlements
116 results, largest first
A St. Louis jury returned a $4.69 billion verdict against Johnson and Johnson on behalf of 22 women who developed ovarian cancer after years of using the company's talcum powder products, with Thomas K. Neill of Gray, Ritter and Graham, P.C. serving on the plaintiff trial team.
A St. Louis jury in July 2018 awarded 22 women and their families $4.69 billion, the largest U.S. verdict of that year, finding that asbestos in Johnson & Johnson's talcum powder products caused ovarian cancer; a Missouri appellate court upheld $2.11 billion in 2020.
Scott Powell of Hare Wynn Newell and Newton served as one of four co-lead class counsel in the $1.51 billion nationwide settlement against Syngenta, recovering losses for hundreds of thousands of U.S. corn growers, grain handlers, and ethanol producers whose market access to China was cut off after the company prematurely commercialized an unapproved GMO corn trait.
A Clayton County jury awarded $1 billion to a woman who was raped at age 14 by an armed security guard her employer hired without verifying he was licensed to carry a weapon.
On February 13, 2016, 21-year-old Riley McPherson was killed on U.S. 271 near Gilmer, Texas, when his van struck the side of a Jefferson Trucking flatbed tractor-trailer that was blocking all four lanes of the highway while its driver, on hour 17 of a run home from Ohio, tried to back it into a private driveway. McPherson's parents, Eddie McPherson and Karen Pearson, sued Jefferson Trucking, driver Eric Wayne Jefferson, and Timothy Wayne Jefferson in the 115th District Court of Upshur County. On November 8, 2018, a jury apportioned 65 percent fault to Eric Jefferson, 20 percent to Jefferson Trucking, 10 percent to Timothy Jefferson, and 5 percent to McPherson, and set damages at $260 million, which the comparative-fault finding reduced to $247 million. The defendants appealed, then voluntarily dismissed their own appeal, leaving the trial court judgment intact.
A Dallas County jury awarded $242.1 million to Benjamin and Kristi Reavis after the front seatbacks of their 2002 Lexus ES 300 collapsed in a rear-end crash and both parents were thrown into their two small children, who suffered permanent brain injuries. Frank L. Branson led the trial team from The Law Offices of Frank L. Branson, which included Debbie Branson. The trial judge reduced the judgment to about $213 million under the Texas punitive damages cap, a divided Dallas appeals court affirmed in 2021, and the case then settled in December 2021 on confidential terms while Toyota's appeal was pending before the Texas Supreme Court.
A $160 million settlement, the largest pre-verdict settlement in Pennsylvania court history, resolved claims against U-Haul after an overfilled propane tank exploded at a North Philadelphia food truck, killing a mother and her teenage daughter and severely burning three others.
After spinal surgery at the Detroit Medical Center's Children's Hospital of Michigan left a 10-year-old girl partially paralyzed and permanently incontinent, and her surgeon took two vacations before the hardware came out, a Wayne County jury awarded $135 million.
An Oakland County jury awarded the Tran family $130,571,897 in 2018 after finding that Beaumont Hospital technicians failed to call a code blue or provide chest compressions when a two-month-old infant suffered a breath-hold spell during a renal scan, leaving him with permanent brain damage and cerebral palsy.
Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg led the trial team that won a $117 million verdict for Stephen Lanzo III, the first jury finding that Johnson & Johnson talc caused a plaintiff's mesothelioma. The New Jersey Appellate Division reversed the judgment in April 2021 over inadmissible expert testimony, and no retrial or final resolution has been publicly reported since, with J&J's talc bankruptcy filings stalling the litigation for years.
A Manhattan jury awarded $85 million to a writer and former New York Times columnist who was severely injured by a double-decker sightseeing bus while lawfully crossing the street.
Thirty-two male survivors of a school-contracted psychiatrist who abused students across more than two decades reached an $80 million settlement with Kamehameha Schools, described at the time as the largest personal-injury settlement in Hawaii history.
A Clay County, Missouri jury awarded $76 million to the family of David Ford, a 48-year-old delivery driver crushed by moving machinery while dropping off vehicle seats at Ford Motor Company's Kansas City Assembly Plant. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict in full in 2019.
A Santa Fe jury returned a $73.2 million verdict, the largest medical malpractice award in New Mexico history at the time, after finding that an OB/GYN and his clinic failed to recognize a high-risk pregnancy, leading to a prolonged birth that left an infant with permanent brain damage and a non-functional right arm.
In April 2018, the first New Jersey trial over C.R. Bard's pelvic mesh implants ended with a $68 million verdict for Mary McGinnis and her husband: $33 million in compensatory damages and $35 million in punitive damages. On July 25, 2023, the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed, holding that Bard was denied a fair trial because the jury never heard that the FDA had cleared the devices through the 510(k) process, and ordered a new trial on all issues. No retrial verdict or disclosed settlement has been publicly reported since.
The City of Seattle and its five insurers paid $65.75 million to Brooke Taylor, a 38-year-old Susman Godfrey partner who suffered a catastrophic traumatic brain injury when a Seattle Fire Department aid unit went through a red light at Fourth Avenue and Seneca Street in April 2016 and struck her Porsche, spinning it into a signal box and a tree. Todd Gardner of Swanson Gardner Meyers negotiated the settlement, approved in King County Superior Court in late December 2018 and reported as the largest personal injury settlement in city history and likely the largest in Washington state.
A propane tank ruptured aboard a Philadelphia food truck on July 1, 2014, killing the truck's owner and her 17-year-old daughter and burning a teenage girl who was helping in the business. Less than a week before the case was set for trial, U-Haul agreed in June 2018 to pay $160 million, plus an additional confidential amount, to resolve the claims of all four victims, with $54.35 million allocated to the girl, identified in press accounts only as Jane Doe because she was still a minor. Plaintiffs' lawyers said her share was the largest settlement ever paid to a minor in Pennsylvania state court history. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that she was represented by lawyers including Thomas J. Duffy. Because she was a minor, the agreement had to be approved by a judge in the Orphans' Court division of the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas.
A Los Angeles County jury awarded $53.7 million to two brothers left with traumatic brain injuries after a CRST big rig crossed the center line on State Route 14 and hit their car head-on.
A 12-year-old's catastrophic injuries from a rotten campground tree produced a $47.5 million pretrial settlement against San Mateo County, PG&E, and their contractors, reportedly the largest single-plaintiff personal injury settlement in California history.
A Franklin County jury awarded $44.5 million to a southeastern Ohio boy left with locked-in syndrome after Athens Medical Laboratory took six days to report markedly abnormal STAT blood tests, and the trial court then refused to apply Ohio's noneconomic damages cap, holding it unconstitutional as applied.
A Boston jury awarded $43.1 million on October 12, 2018 to the widow and son of Louis Summerlin, a former brake mechanic and lifelong menthol smoker who died of lung cancer in 2015 at 73, finding R.J. Reynolds' Salem and Kool cigarettes defectively designed and the company guilty of fraud, while clearing Philip Morris and an auto parts distributor. Jerome Block of Levy Konigsberg tried the case with Michael Shepard of Shepard Law. It was the first trial in the country to take a lung cancer claim to verdict against both tobacco and asbestos defendants, and the largest verdict in New England that year.
Two men who suffered severe blast, burn, and traumatic brain injuries when a KOMO news helicopter fell onto their vehicles during morning rush hour in March 2014 received a $40 million settlement five weeks into trial.
A 12-year-old girl suffered permanent, catastrophic brain damage after cardiac arrest during a PICC-line procedure at Highland Park Hospital, and Power Rogers secured a $40 million settlement that the Jury Verdict Reporter identified as the largest-ever Cook County recovery for a brain-injured minor.
Carrie DeJongh, 40, of Hull, Iowa, died on June 9, 2015 after receiving iodinated contrast dye for a CT scan at Sioux Center Health, when the physician treating her gave her an antihistamine but did not immediately check her vital signs or give epinephrine. Her family sued Sioux Center Health and Dr. Roy T. Slice for negligence, and both defendants denied the allegations. A Sioux County jury in Orange City returned a $29.5 million verdict on June 13, 2018, covering DeJongh's pain and suffering before her death and loss of consortium for her husband and four children. No appeal, remittitur or reduction has turned up since.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.