Largest Personal Injury Verdicts Never Collected of 2018

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.