Top Personal Injury Settlements of 2019
The largest personal injury settlements from 2019, nationwide for one client or family, ranked by amount. Each links to the full story, the firm, and the record behind the number.
- $140 millionSettlement
$140 Million Settlement After an 18-Wheeler Crash Left an East Texas Driver Quadriplegic
A 39-year-old man was left quadriplegic in 2017 when an 18-wheeler struck his vehicle on Highway 259 near Ore City in Upshur County, Texas. The case went to trial, where evidence showed the truck's driver, Dijuana Smith, had been involved in multiple crashes before the wreck, and where attorneys said she had violated state and federal trucking regulations. Goudarzi & Young, L.L.P., of Gilmer, Texas, represented the injured man, and the parties reached a $140 million settlement in July 2019. The firm, and later a Lawdragon profile of managing partner Brent Goudarzi, both described it as the largest settlement for a single plaintiff in American legal history. The identities of the plaintiff and the trucking company were not publicly disclosed.
- $28.5 millionSettlement
$28.5 Million Settlement for Special-Needs Boy Left Alone by School District
An 11-year-old with an IEP requiring door-to-door transport was abandoned at the school curb by district staff, struck by a car on a four-lane road, and left with permanent brain damage; the $28.5 million settlement against Victor Elementary School District was the largest pedestrian accident settlement in California in 2019.
- $22.5 millionSettlementPaid
$22.5 Million After a Six-Week-Old Was Left Permanently Brain Damaged During Routine Spinal Surgery
A Fitchburg family recovered $22.5 million after their six-week-old son suffered permanent brain damage during surgery at UW Health's American Family Children's Hospital. The suit alleged an anesthesia resident failed to respond to prolonged low blood pressure readings. It is the second largest payment ever made by Wisconsin's Injured Patients and Families Compensation Fund.
After trial: The settlement was paid through Wisconsin's Injured Patients and Families Compensation Fund, the second largest payment in that fund's recorded history. Most of the money was placed in two accounts for the child's lifetime care.
- $20 millionSettlementPaid
$20 Million Settlement for Family of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, Killed in Her Alley by Officer She Called
Justine Ruszczyk Damond called 911 to report a woman screaming behind her house, then walked out in her pajamas to meet the squad car. Officer Mohamed Noor shot her from the passenger seat. Minneapolis settled with her family for $20 million in May 2019, more than four times the largest police payout in the city's history.
After trial: Settlement agreed and approved; the civil case is final and was paid in full. The family directed $2 million of the $20 million to the Minneapolis Foundation's Fund for Safe Communities.
- $19.2 millionSettlementPaid
$19.2 Million Settlement for Elizabeth Gas Explosion That Killed Three Members of One Family
A gas explosion at a converted multi-family house in Elizabeth, New Jersey on November 11, 2015 badly burned six members of the Henderson family and, over the following weeks and months, killed three of them. The family sued the gas utility and the property owner, alleging an improperly capped gas line caused the blast. On February 11, 2019, a Union County Superior Court judge approved a $19.2 million settlement, reached in mediation, apportioned among three estates and three surviving claimants.
After trial: This was a mediated settlement approved by the court, not a litigated verdict, and no appeal followed. The $19.2 million figure is the total recovery before the deduction of court-approved attorney fees, funeral expenses and Medicaid liens; the percentages above apply to the net amount after those deductions.
Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman, LLC2019 · Superior Court of New Jersey, Union CountyRead the full story → - $18.75 millionSettlement
$18.75 Million for the Family of a Stamford Woman Killed by a ShopRite Truck That Ran a Red Light
Cristina Vomoca, 38, died eight days after a ShopRite tractor-trailer ran a red light in Greenwich and struck her car in 2016. Food Haulers Inc. and its parent Wakefern Food Corp. settled with her estate for $18.75 million in August 2019, roughly a day after a Stamford jury had already been handed the case.
After trial: The case settled during jury deliberations, about a day after the case was handed to the jury at the end of a two-week trial, so no verdict was ever returned and there was nothing to appeal. The reported figure was more than double the pre-trial offer.
- $11.5 millionSettlement
$11.5 Million FTCA Settlement for Navy Family After Birth Injury at Naval Hospital Guam
A federal judge approved an $11.5 million settlement for a Virginia Beach Navy family whose son was born with severe brain damage at U.S. Naval Hospital Guam in 2014, after attorneys Michael Imprevento and Kevin Biniazan sued the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
- $9.5 millionSettlement
Chicago Pays $9.5 Million After Cyclist's Wheel Caught in Forgotten Streetcar Rails on Designated Bike Route
Chicago agreed to pay $9.5 million to Catalin Dumitrescu, who suffered catastrophic injuries in 2014 when his bicycle wheel lodged in exposed streetcar rails that had been buried in an East Hyde Park street and then re-designated as a bike route without removing the decades-old hazard.
- $8.25 millionSettlementPaid
$8.25 Million Settlement With Detroit for Family of 7-Year-Old Girl Shot by Police During 2010 Raid
A 7-year-old girl asleep on a couch with her grandmother was fatally shot in the head during a May 2010 Detroit police raid. Two criminal trials of the officer ended in hung juries and the charge was later dismissed. In April 2019, days before the civil trial was to begin, the City of Detroit settled the family's lawsuit for $8.25 million.
After trial: The case settled before trial, so there was no verdict; the only appeal was an earlier pretrial appeal on gross negligence, which the Michigan Supreme Court declined to hear. Detroit's corporation counsel confirmed the amount and said the City Council had to approve it.
Fieger, Fieger, Kenney & Harrington, P.C.2019 · Wayne County Circuit Court, Detroit, MichiganRead the full story → - $6.75 millionSettlementPaid
Milwaukee County Settles Jail Dehydration Death for $6.75 Million
Terrill Thomas, a 38-year-old Milwaukee man with a history of bipolar disorder, died of dehydration in the Milwaukee County Jail in April 2016 after a jail lieutenant ordered the water to his cell shut off for a week as punishment for flooding a previous cell. He lost 34 pounds before he was found dead on April 24, 2016. His estate sued Milwaukee County and the jail's medical contractor, Armor Correctional Health Services, in federal court, and the case settled in March 2019 for $6.75 million, split $5 million from the county and $1.75 million from Armor. The money was divided among Thomas's six children, several of them minors.
After trial: The settlement was paid: $5 million by Milwaukee County and $1.75 million by Armor Correctional Health Services, finalized in March 2019 and made public that May. There was no appeal; the lawsuit was dismissed as part of the settlement.
Budge & Heipt, PLLC2019 · U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Case No. 2:17-cv-01128Read the full story → - $6.09 millionSettlement
Wrongful Death Truck Case Settles for $6.09 Million, Ranked Ninth Among All Texas Settlements in 2019
After a Detmar Logistics frac sand truck fatally injured Nanasha Ra-Nee Mild in 2018, Sutliff & Stout identified six liable parties and secured a $6.09 million settlement that ranked ninth among all Texas civil settlements in 2019.
- $6 millionSettlement
Family of Toddler Drowned at Hanahan Apartment Pool Recovers $6 Million
A Berkeley County apartment complex that failed to equip its pool gates with code-required latching hardware settled the wrongful death claim of a three-year-old boy's family for six million dollars.
- $5.7 millionSettlement
$5.7 Million Settlement for Mother of 12-Year-Old Electrocuted by Fence at Fresno Apartment Complex
A Fresno mother sued the owners of the Villa Margaritas apartments after her 12-year-old son was electrocuted by a chain-link fence energized by an improperly installed surveillance camera wire. The case settled for $5.7 million in August 2019, weeks before a September 9 trial date. Warren Paboojian represented the family.
After trial: The case settled before trial and no appeal followed. The defendants' insurance and payment terms were not made public, and the defense did not confirm the amount to the press.
- $3 millionSettlement
$3 Million Settlement for Driver Hit Head-On by Drunk Motorist Served at Columbia Tavern
Travis Butler, 19, was driving to work in January 2016 when a drunk driver crossed the center line and hit him head-on, leaving him with seven broken bones, a liver laceration and seven surgeries. His dram shop suit against the driver and Hickory Tavern in Columbia settled for $3 million in January 2019. The driver had pleaded guilty to DUI resulting in great bodily injury.
After trial: The settlement terms beyond the total were not made public, and we could not confirm how the amount was divided between the tavern and the driver or whether it has been paid.
- $3 millionSettlement
Family of Man Killed at a Rural Stop Sign Settles Wrongful-Death Case for $3 Million
A commercial truck driver ran a stop sign on a North Carolina country road and killed a 60-year-old man, and his family settled their confidential wrongful-death claim for $3 million, a result that tied for 25th among the state's top verdicts and settlements of 2019.
- $2.15 millionSettlement
Geico Pays $2.15 Million After Bad-Faith Refusal in Dorchester County Rear-End Case
A plumber rear-ended at a Dorchester County stoplight won a $2.2 million jury verdict in 2018, then secured a $2.15 million global settlement the following year after Geico faced a bad-faith lawsuit for refusing to tender its $50,000 policy limits before trial.
- $2 millionSettlement
$2 Million Settlement for Alaska Prisoner Paralyzed by Spinal Infection After Six Days of Ibuprofen
In August 2015 Nicholas Tucker, a 37-year-old commercial fisherman from Ketchikan serving a sentence at Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward, developed a spinal cord infection. Over six days of written medical requests, a wheelchair trip to the clinic and notes recording severe radiating pain, staff gave him ibuprofen and a muscle relaxant. Other prisoners were moving him to the toilet and writing his requests for him by the time a nurse found he could not get out of his bunk. He was flown to Anchorage for emergency surgery and is permanently partially paralyzed. The State of Alaska settled in June 2019 for $1,800,000 plus $200,000 in Medicaid liens.
After trial: Final settlement reached in June 2019, before a scheduled trial. The $2,000,000 is the state's total obligation: $1,800,000 to Tucker plus about $200,000 in Medicaid liens.
Angstman Law Office, Inc. and Cashion Gilmore & Lindemuth2019 · Alaska Superior CourtRead the full story → - $1.6 millionSettlement
$1.6 Million Settlement for Decatur Man Struck on Sidewalk While Walking His Dog
Mike Rafi secured a $1.6 million presuit settlement for a 69-year-old builder and jazz journalist who suffered a fractured skull and lasting neurological damage after an SUV driver reversed out of a driveway and struck him on a Decatur sidewalk while he was walking his dog.
- $1.25 millionSettlement
$1.25 Million Settlement for Family of Man Shot 14 Times by LMPD Officers
Louisville Metro Government paid $1.25 million to the family of Darnell Wicker, a 57-year-old man shot 14 times by LMPD officers during a 2016 domestic-disturbance call in which he was holding a tree saw.
Sam Aguiar Injury Lawyers2019 · Louisville, KY (civil lawsuit against Louisville Metro Government)Read the full story → - $1.15 millionSettlement
$1.15 Million Settlement for Estate of Teacher Who Died of Embolism After Restaurant Doorway Fall
Jennifer Collum-Glassman, a 45-year-old teacher, fractured her left ankle when she tripped leaving a Red Bank restaurant on March 25, 2017, and died of a pulmonary embolism on April 26 after ankle surgery. Her husband sued as executor of her estate. The restaurant's owners and operators, Juanito's, Inc. and KLE Properties, LLC, settled the wrongful death and survival claims before trial in September 2019.
After trial: The settlement was final when the stipulation of dismissal was filed in September 2019. The later appeals to the Appellate Division and the New Jersey Supreme Court concerned only how the settlement is credited against the remaining medical defendants.
Lomurro Munson LLC2019 · Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Monmouth CountyRead the full story →
All 2019 verdicts and settlements
146 results, largest first
An $800 million settlement from MGM Resorts International resolved claims by more than 4,400 plaintiffs over the October 1, 2017 Route 91 Harvest Festival mass shooting in Las Vegas, one of the largest victim-compensation settlements in U.S. history.
In multidistrict litigation before Judge Andrew J. Guilford, CaseyGerry served as class counsel in a $393.5 million settlement resolving allegations that Wells Fargo secretly loaded unnecessary collateral protection insurance onto auto loan accounts, pushing hundreds of thousands of borrowers into delinquency and causing roughly 27,000 wrongful vehicle repossessions.
A Manhattan jury found in May 2019 that asbestos in Johnson's Baby Powder and Shower to Shower caused Donna Olson's pleural mesothelioma, awarding $25 million in compensatory damages and $300 million in punitive damages, the largest talc verdict in New York history. Jerome H. Block of Levy Konigsberg tried the case. The trial court cut the award to $120 million in November 2020, and on July 19, 2022 the Appellate Division, First Department reversed outright and directed judgment for Johnson & Johnson, holding that the plaintiffs' medical expert never gave a scientific expression of the minimum lifetime exposure needed to cause the disease.
Mary Alexander & Associates served as co-counsel for seven California counties and three cities in a landmark public-nuisance action that secured a $1.15 billion trial judgment (later reduced on appeal to pre-1951 homes) and ultimately resolved in 2019 for $305 million to fund lead paint abatement across California residences.
Hours before opening arguments in the first federal opioid bellwether trial, Cuyahoga and Summit counties in Ohio secured a $260 million settlement from distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson, plus manufacturer Teva.
A Dallas County, Alabama jury awarded Travaris Smith $151.8 million after a 1998 Ford Explorer rolled twice and severed his spinal cord, finding Ford failed its own safety standards and destroyed test data to conceal the defect.
A 39-year-old man was left quadriplegic in 2017 when an 18-wheeler struck his vehicle on Highway 259 near Ore City in Upshur County, Texas. The case went to trial, where evidence showed the truck's driver, Dijuana Smith, had been involved in multiple crashes before the wreck, and where attorneys said she had violated state and federal trucking regulations. Goudarzi & Young, L.L.P., of Gilmer, Texas, represented the injured man, and the parties reached a $140 million settlement in July 2019. The firm, and later a Lawdragon profile of managing partner Brent Goudarzi, both described it as the largest settlement for a single plaintiff in American legal history. The identities of the plaintiff and the trucking company were not publicly disclosed.
A Cuyahoga County jury awarded $134 million to a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and the Ohio Supreme Court later struck down a statutory damages cap as unconstitutional when applied to child victims of intentional criminal acts.
A King County jury awarded $123 million to 40 plaintiffs after five international students were killed and dozens injured when a Ride the Ducks amphibious vehicle suffered a catastrophic axle fracture on Seattle's Aurora Bridge in 2015.
A Philadelphia jury found that Ethicon negligently designed the TVT-O pelvic mesh implanted in Susan McFarland of Altoona and returned $120 million, which Kline & Specter called the largest pelvic-mesh verdict reached to that point.
A Philadelphia jury returned $80 million, including $50 million in punitive damages, against Johnson & Johnson and its Ethicon unit after finding the Prolift transvaginal mesh implanted in Patricia Mesigian was defective and inadequately labeled.
A Brooklyn jury found the NYC Transit Authority fully at fault after a track crew dropped a railroad tie onto cyclist Robert Liciaga, severing his spine, and returned $110,174,972.38.
On July 18, 2016, a Schnitzer Southeast tractor-trailer crossed the center line of U.S. Highway 80 in Russell County, Alabama, and killed five members of one family in a head-on collision, including Judy Madere, 58. A Muscogee County State Court jury in Columbus, Georgia found Schnitzer Southeast and its parent, Schnitzer Steel Industries, liable and returned a $280,065,000 verdict for Madere's death on August 23, 2019, reported at the time as the largest wrongful death verdict against a trucking company. Schnitzer said it would appeal, but instead of litigating the verdict, it resolved Madere's suit together with her twin sister Trudy Hebert's separate, still pending suit from the same crash for a combined $68 million in the following fiscal quarter, according to Schnitzer's SEC filings. Three earlier suits from the same crash, brought by the estates of the two children and their mother, had already settled for $35 million combined. The individual amounts within the $68 million settlement are not public.
A DeKalb County jury awarded $81 million in total damages to LaQuan Taylor, a Navy veteran shot at least 11 times during a robbery in a Kroger parking lot. After apportioning 14 percent of the fault to the two assailants, the judgment against Kroger came to $69,660,000.
A Bexar County jury returned a $59.8 million verdict, later converted to a $60.09 million judgment, for 23-year-old Armando Guerrero III after a drunk driver ran a red light at nearly twice the posted speed limit on Southwest Military Drive.
After a methanol "rainbow" demonstration erupted into a fireball and burned 16-year-old Alonzo Yanes over more than 30 percent of his body, Gair Gair Conason won a $59.17 million verdict against the New York City Department of Education and his chemistry teacher.
A Maricopa County jury awarded $58.5 million to families who donated deceased relatives' bodies believing they would be used for medical research, only to learn the Biological Resource Center of Arizona had dismembered and sold the remains to brokers worldwide.
Alberta Pilliod, a retired teacher and school administrator from Livermore, sprayed Roundup on the couple's properties for nearly 30 years and was diagnosed in April 2015 with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma in her central nervous system, which recurred in her brain in 2016. On May 13, 2019, an Alameda County jury awarded her about $37.2 million in compensatory damages and $1 billion in punitive damages, alongside a separate award to her husband. Judge Winifred Smith reduced her judgment to $56,005,830, the Court of Appeal affirmed in August 2021, and the California Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court both declined to disturb it.
A Cook County jury returned a $101 million verdict against West Suburban Medical Center after staff ignored fetal monitoring for six hours during labor, though a pre-verdict high-low agreement limited the family's recovery to $50 million.
Tom Neill of Gray, Ritter and Graham represented the family of one victim killed when a 3,000-pound pressurized steam vessel exploded at Loy-Lange Box Company in St. Louis's Soulard neighborhood, launching the tank into a neighboring laundry and killing four people total; consolidated wrongful-death, injury, and property suits settled for more than $47 million.
A Philadelphia jury found on January 31, 2019 that three Ethicon pelvic mesh products were defective and awarded Suzanne Emmett, a Lancaster County woman, and her husband $41 million against Ethicon and Johnson & Johnson. The award included $15 million in compensatory damages to Emmett, $1 million to her husband for loss of consortium and $25 million in punitive damages. Emmett had needed nine surgeries. Ethicon said it would appeal.
On February 23, 2017, a Werner Enterprises student driver on his eighth day behind the wheel crossed four lanes of Interstate 10 and the median outside Las Cruces, New Mexico, and struck Kathryn Armijo's vehicle head-on, killing her. Her estate sued Werner, the driver, and the driver's trainer over inadequate training and supervision, and a Santa Fe County jury returned a $40.5 million verdict on October 11, 2019, including $10 million in punitive damages. David Harris, a partner at Sico Hoelscher Harris LLP, was plaintiff co-counsel for the estate. No appeal of the verdict has surfaced, and Werner, a large publicly traded and insured motor carrier, is treated as having satisfied the judgment.
A Dallas jury awarded $37.6 million in February 2019 to Sarah Milburn, left quadriplegic after a 2015 Uber crash, after finding Honda's two-part third-row seat belt design so counterintuitive that fewer than one in ten unfamiliar users could operate it correctly; the Texas Supreme Court reversed the judgment in 2024 on statutory presumption grounds.
In the first consolidated multi-plaintiff talc trial, a Middlesex County jury awarded $37.3 million on September 11, 2019 to four people who developed mesothelioma after their parents powdered them with Johnson's Baby Powder as children, and a second jury added $750 million in punitive damages in February 2020, which Judge Ana Viscomi cut to $186.5 million under New Jersey's five-times cap. Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg tried the case with Chris Placitella and Chris Panatier. On October 3, 2023 the Appellate Division reversed every judgment and ordered new trials, holding that the trial court had admitted three plaintiffs' experts without the gatekeeping New Jersey law requires.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.