Largest Personal Injury Recoveries Confirmed Paid of 2022
Personal injury results from 2022, nationwide where the record shows the money was paid, or the defendant is an insurer or institution that pays, ranked by amount.
- $30 millionVerdictPaid
Newton County Jury Awards Indiana Farmer $30 Million After Semi Hits His Tractor on U.S. 41
Daniel Nelson, a farmer from Lake Village, Indiana, was driving his tractor north on U.S. 41 in Newton County on the morning of May 16, 2019, when a semitrailer that failed to slow down or change lanes struck it and threw him from the seat. He suffered head and brain injuries, a fractured pelvis and five broken ribs. Nelson and his wife, Diana, sued the trucking company, its customer and the driver, and after the case bounced between federal and state court on jurisdictional grounds, it was tried over seven days in Newton County Superior Court. On February 16, 2022, the jury deliberated about two and a half hours before awarding $25 million to Daniel Nelson and $5 million to Diana Nelson, a $30 million verdict that stood.
After trial: Counsel told The Times of Northwest Indiana that insurance would cover the verdict amount, which is the only public indication of payment; no satisfaction of judgment is available in an online record we could reach. No appeal of the verdict appears in Indiana appellate records and no appellate decision in the case has been published.
Schafer & Schafer LLP2022 · Newton County Superior Court, Kentland, Indiana (Cause No. 56D01-1911-CT-1189)Read the full story → - $12 millionSettlementPaid
City of Rochester Settles Daniel Prude Wrongful Death Suit for $12 Million
Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old Rochester man in the middle of a mental health crisis, died in March 2020 after police officers put a spit hood over his head and held him face down on the pavement until he stopped breathing. The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide from asphyxia during restraint, though a state grand jury declined to indict the officers. Elliot D. Shields of Roth & Roth, LLP filed the family's federal civil rights suit against the City of Rochester in September 2020. On October 6, 2022, a federal judge approved a $12 million settlement, split evenly between pain-and-suffering and wrongful death claims, with the city admitting no liability.
After trial: A federal judge approved the settlement on October 6, 2022. It was funded by the City of Rochester as an institutional defendant, making it a collectable, paid result rather than an award against individual officers.
Roth & Roth, LLP2022 · U.S. District Court for the Western District of New YorkRead the full story → - $8 millionSettlementPaid
The Clinic Documented the Signs of Abuse on Her Infant Son and Never Told Her, and Never Told the State. He Was Beaten Nearly to Death at Six Months Old.
Alexandria Orduna brought her son to a Brewer clinic repeatedly from the time he was four days old. Staff saw and documented red-flag signs of physical abuse and never told her and never reported it to the state, as Maine law requires. At about six and a half months old he was beaten so badly he nearly died. He is permanently blind and brain-injured.
After trial: Approved by the court and final at $8,000,000. A tentative figure of $10,000,000 was announced in February 2022 and widely reported at that number; the settlement actually approved and announced in August 2022 was $8,000,000, and that is the figure that stood.
- ~$5 millionVerdictReduced from $10.1 millionPaid
Dallas Jury Awards $10.1 Million After Hospital Delay Left Woman Paralyzed
A Dallas County jury found Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Flower Mound willfully and wantonly negligent for delaying treatment of a spinal epidural hemorrhage that left Judy 'Jessie' Adams a paraplegic, returning a verdict of $10,125,000 for Adams and her husband Richard on December 9, 2022. Jurors split fault 69 percent to the hospital, 30 percent to the physician who gave the steroid injection that triggered the bleeding, and 1 percent to his practice. Texas's cap on non-economic damages in health care liability claims cut the couple's non-economic recovery to $500,000, leaving a collectible total of roughly $5 million. The hospital appealed, and its own filing in the court of appeals says the parties reached a full and final settlement on May 31, 2023 and funded it before the appeal was dismissed on July 11, 2023, so the amount Adams ultimately received is not public. Michael Lyons, Christopher Carr, Michael Fechner and Stephen Higdon of Lyons & Simmons represented the Adamses at trial.
After trial: The trial court signed judgment on May 1, 2023, and the hospital appealed to the Fifth District Court of Appeals in Dallas, No. 05-23-00537-CV.
Lyons & Simmons, LLP2022 · 68th Judicial District Court, Dallas County, Texas (Case No. DC-20-17490)Read the full story → - $2.4 millionVerdictPaid
A Bowling Ball Thrown From the Next Lane Crushed Her Hand, and the Jury Held the Ski Resort Responsible for Its Employee's Party Trick.
Amy Herzog worked at Jupiter Bowl in Kimball Junction. During a Park City Mountain Resort employee party in April 2019, a resort employee performed a 360-degree spin and released his ball into her lane while she was freeing a stuck ball from the gutter, crushing her left hand. Three surgeries left her with a permanently deformed hand that cannot form a fist. A Summit County jury found Vail Resorts 80 percent at fault and its employee 20 percent, awarded $2,402,000, and found the employee was acting within the scope of his employment. The trial judge later vacated the employer-liability finding and cut the award by 20 percent, but the Utah Court of Appeals reversed that ruling in 2025 and reinstated the full judgment.
After trial: Final as reinstated. The jury returned $2,402,000 in November 2022 and the district court entered judgment in December 2022.
Christensen & Jensen, P.C.2022 · Third District Court, Summit County, UT (reinstated in full by the Utah Court of Appeals)Read the full story →
114 results, largest first
A Gwinnett County jury awarded roughly $24 million in compensatory damages and $1.7 billion in punitive damages against Ford Motor Company for the 2014 rollover deaths of Melvin and Voncile Hill in a 2002 F-250, with James E. Butler Jr. of Butler Prather LLP as lead trial counsel; the Georgia Court of Appeals vacated the judgment in November 2024 and ordered a new trial, and Ford settled the case on confidential terms in September 2025 before a third trial could begin.
Saltz Mongeluzzi and Bendesky joined the plaintiffs' leadership team that secured a $1.2 billion settlement for the families and survivors of 98 people killed when Champlain Towers South collapsed in Surfside, Florida on June 24, 2021 -- the largest construction-disaster settlement in U.S. history.
Rachel Furst of Grossman Roth Yaffa Cohen served as co-chair of the plaintiffs' team that secured a $1.2 billion settlement for the families of 98 people killed when Champlain Towers South collapsed in Surfside, Florida -- the largest construction-disaster settlement in U.S. history.
Judd Rosen served as court-appointed lead attorney for the wrongful death and non-owner victim class in the Champlain Towers South collapse litigation, helping secure a $1.2 billion global settlement for the families of the 98 people killed when the Surfside, Florida condominium tower fell on June 24, 2021.
Court-appointed co-chair lead counsel Ricardo Martinez-Cid of Podhurst Orseck helped secure over $1 billion for the families of 98 people killed in the June 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside, Florida, with final approval reached in under a year.
After Champlain Towers South collapsed in the middle of the night and killed 98 people, Curtis Miner of Colson Hicks Eidson served as court-appointed liaison counsel for the wrongful death and personal injury claimants, part of a leadership team that reached a roughly $1.02 billion class settlement.
A federal jury found CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart liable for creating an opioid public nuisance in northeast Ohio, leading to a $650 million abatement judgment, the first of its kind against pharmacy chains in U.S. history.
A Miami federal court entered a roughly $440 million judgment against Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, and MSC for using port terminals Cuba confiscated in 1960, a result the Supreme Court reinstated by a vote of 8 to 1 in 2026.
A King County jury awarded $275 million to thirteen Sky Valley Education Center students and families who suffered neurological injuries from PCB-contaminated light fixtures manufactured by Monsanto.
A Dallas jury found Charter Communications liable for the December 2019 murder of 83-year-old customer Betty Jo McClain Thomas by Roy Holden Jr., a Spectrum field technician who had serviced her home the day before, and for forging her signature on an arbitration agreement after her death. The jury awarded $375 million in actual damages and $7 billion in punitive damages. The family then remitted the punitive award down to twice the compensatory damages, in line with the due-process ratio limits the U.S. Supreme Court set in State Farm v. Campbell, and the trial court entered judgment for $1.147 billion. The family later agreed to a further remittitur to $262 million rather than keep defending the larger figure on appeal. Charter then settled confidentially for less than that, funded by its liability insurance, while its appeal to the Fifth Court of Appeals was still pending, and the appeal was dismissed at Charter's own request.
Sol Weiss served as co-lead counsel in a class action that secured $206 million in damages against two former Luzerne County judges who accepted $2.8 million in kickbacks to funnel hundreds of children into private juvenile detention facilities.
Morgan & Morgan's John Yanchunis served as court-appointed co-lead counsel in the multidistrict litigation over Capital One's 2019 data breach, which exposed the personal information of roughly 98 million U.S. customers. The $190 million settlement won final approval in 2022 as one of the largest data breach recoveries in U.S. history.
A St. Louis jury awarded $28 million in compensatory damages and $149 million in punitive damages to Shannon Dugan, a New Jersey sheriff's deputy who was sexually assaulted by a Hyatt security guard who used his master key to enter her hotel room while she slept. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the full award in December 2024.
A DeKalb County jury awarded $160 million to the families of Ewell Ynoa and Giovan Diaz, two young men shot and killed at a 2017 rap concert at the Masquerade venue in Underground Atlanta, finding Sony Music Holdings failed to protect patrons at the show.
Kristina Infante and the Podhurst Orseck team secured a $127.5 million settlement from the federal government on behalf of 40 survivors and families of victims killed or wounded in the February 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, after demonstrating the FBI received advance warnings it failed to investigate.
Stuart Grossman, Neal Roth, and Alex Arteaga-Gomez of Grossman Roth Yaffa Cohen represented families in the $127.5 million federal settlement arising from the FBI's failure to follow up on a tip warning that Nikolas Cruz was planning a school shooting five weeks before the February 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas massacre.
A Bibb County State Court jury awarded $118 million, including $90 million in punitive damages, to Joseph Cason Jr. and his mother Betty Gill after surveillance video showed care home employees striking the severely disabled man at least 69 times. The December 2022 verdict against the Total Care defendants was the largest in the court's history.
Steven Campora of Dreyer Babich Buccola Wood Campora joined a coalition of firms that secured a $117 million settlement from 20 former PG&E officers and directors on behalf of the PG&E Fire Victim Trust, resolving breach-of-fiduciary-duty claims tied to the 2015 Butte Fire, 2017 North Bay fires, and 2018 Camp Fire.
Walkup shareholder Michael A. Kelly served on the plaintiffs' leadership team that secured a $117 million settlement from former PG&E officers and directors over wildfires that ranked among the deadliest in California history.
A federal jury found General Motors liable for defective piston rings in its 5.3-liter Vortec V8 engines and awarded $102.6 million to a class of roughly 38,000 truck and SUV owners across three states.
A federal jury in Atlanta awarded $100 million to Jerry Blasingame, a 65-year-old man rendered quadriplegic after an Atlanta police officer tased him without warning during a foot pursuit, though the award was ultimately reduced to $21 million following post-trial rulings and a 2026 Eleventh Circuit decision.
A Miami-Dade jury returned a $95 million verdict, among the largest motor-vehicle awards in the history of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, for the family of a young woman killed and her brother catastrophically injured when a drunk driver traveled the wrong way on I-95 in December 2015 after being overserved at a Miami bar.
Gallagher & Kennedy's Kevin Neal and Kenneth Ralston served as Arizona's outside counsel and secured an $85 million settlement from Google over the deceptive collection of smartphone users' location data.
A federal jury awarded $85 million against San Diego County after deputies tased, beat, and hogtied Lucky Phounsy during a 2015 mental health crisis; the county later settled for $12 million after the judge vacated the wrongful-death damages and ordered a new trial on that portion.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.