Largest 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: The settlement was reached before trial and was not appealed. Because Jane Doe was a minor, it required approval from a Philadelphia Orphans' Court judge.
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: The jury's $289.25 million verdict was reduced twice. The trial court cut punitive damages from $250 million to $39.25 million on due-process grounds (one-to-one ratio), which Johnson accepted, leaving $78.5 million.
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: The $45.4 million verdict was apportioned, leaving Los Angeles County liable for about $20.7 million as its 45 percent share. WitnessLA reported in January 2020 that the county reduced that to a $10.5 million judgment and paid the first $5.5 million during the 2018 to 2019 fiscal year, so the ranked figure here is the $10.5 million that stood against the county.
- $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: This was a civil settlement against the City of Chicago and did not affect Frugoli's separate criminal case; he had already pleaded guilty to aggravated DUI and leaving the scene of a fatal crash and was serving an eight-year sentence, with release scheduled for April 2019. No appeal followed the settlement.
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: Ford's appeal to the Delaware Supreme Court did not change the amount, but it forced a second look. The appellate court held that the trial judge had asked the wrong question the first time, evaluating whether Ford's $8,125,000 share was excessive instead of asking whether the jury's underlying $40,625,000 compensatory finding was excessive.
- $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: The $7,958,113.67 jury verdict was reduced to $6,575,354.58 under Idaho Code section 6-1603, the state's cap on noneconomic damages in force for a 2018 judgment, a reduction of $1,382,759.09. The Ackerschotts preserved a constitutional challenge to that cap on cross-appeal.
Pedersen Whitehead & Hanby2018 · District Court of the Seventh Judicial District, Bonneville County (Idaho Falls)Read 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: The case settled at mediation before any ruling on the merits, so no court decided whether the shooting was excessive force. Lynnwood's insurance risk pool paid the $1.75 million in full in late September 2018 under the city's duty to defend Officer Yates, with no admission of wrongdoing by the officer or the city, which was not itself a defendant.
Budge & Heipt, PLLC2018 · U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, SeattleRead the full story →
80 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.
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 honest frame: 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.
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.
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.
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 Manhattan jury awarded $45.2 million to Marion Hedges, who suffered permanent brain damage after two boys threw a shopping cart from a fourth-floor walkway onto her head at East River Plaza mall in East Harlem on October 30, 2011.
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.
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.
Gair Gair Conason secured a $27.5 million settlement from the Diocese of Brooklyn for four boys abused by a parish religion teacher, reported as the largest individual Catholic Church sexual-abuse payout on record at the time.
A San Diego jury found Robert O. Young, author of the best-selling book "The pH Miracle," liable for $105 million after he treated Dawn Kali's breast cancer with baking soda infusions and told her to skip conventional care, an award a judge later cut to about $25.9 million.
A Dallas County jury awarded $25 million to the mother of Jerry Brown Jr., a Dallas Cowboys practice-squad player killed when his teammate Josh Brent drove drunk at more than twice the legal limit, after finding that Beamers nightclub had over-served Brent alcohol before the fatal crash.
A Fulton County jury awarded $25 million against MARTA after a 66-year-old paratransit rider fell descending an awkwardly angled bus step and suffered catastrophic brain damage that left her in a vegetative state.
A federal bench trial awarded $24.7 million to a Navy family after Tripler Army Medical Center physicians failed to administer IV antibiotics for roughly 48 hours following a post-delivery infection, leaving the patient with permanent kidney failure.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.