Top Personal Injury Recoveries Confirmed Paid of 2023
Personal injury results from 2023, nationwide where the record shows the money was paid, or the defendant is an insurer or institution that pays, ranked by amount.
- $56 millionSettlementPaid
Autoliv Settles $127 Million Seatbelt Defect Judgment for $56 Million After Abandoning Its Appeal
On April 12, 2013, Micah Andrews, 38, died on Interstate 575 north of Atlanta when he swerved to miss a snapping turtle in the road, ran off the shoulder into trees at about 35 miles an hour, and was killed inside a crash he should have survived: his airbag did not deploy and his Autoliv designed seatbelt spooled out about 20 inches of webbing, letting his face hit the steering wheel hub hard enough to fracture the base of his skull. His widow, Jamie Andrews, sued Autoliv and Mazda in 2014, Mazda settled its own part of the case confidentially in June 2016, and Jim Butler of Butler Prather LLP tried the case with co counsel to a bench verdict before U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones, who found the seatbelt defectively designed and entered a $127,019,343.40 judgment at the end of December 2021, including $100 million in punitive damages. Autoliv appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, arguing the punitive award was excessive under Georgia law, then abandoned that appeal and paid $56 million to close the case on July 27, 2023, of which $42 million went to Jamie Andrews and $14 million went to the State of Georgia, which had claimed a share of the punitive award.
After trial: Settled and paid. Autoliv appealed to the Eleventh Circuit in November 2022 but abandoned its appeal on July 27, 2023 and paid $56 million to settle: $42 million to Jamie Andrews and $14 million to the State of Georgia.
Butler Prather LLP2023 · U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta DivisionRead the full story → - $28 millionSettlementPaid
$28 Million Settlement for Electrician Burned Over 60 Percent of His Body in Newark Panel Explosion
Carlos Gomez was burned over 60 percent of his body when an electrical panel exploded while he worked in a Newark office building in 2019. His suit against IDT Corp. and other defendants settled for $28 million, approved by the Essex County Superior Court in February 2023 and ranked by the New Jersey Law Journal as the largest reported New Jersey personal injury settlement of the court's 2022-2023 term.
After trial: A court-approved settlement, so there is no appeal and no post-trial reduction. The agreement was reached in 2022 and approved in Essex County in February 2023.
- $25 millionVerdictPaid
Santa Barbara Jury Finds School District 80 Percent At Fault for Coach's Grooming and Abuse of a Student
A Santa Barbara jury awarded $25 million to a man identified in court papers as John Doe #2, who was groomed and sexually abused as a teenager by Justin Sell, a former security guard and assistant football coach at Dos Pueblos High School. The December 2023 verdict, reached after a three week trial, apportioned 80 percent of the fault to Santa Barbara Unified School District for keeping Sell employed and failing to report his conduct to law enforcement despite staff being mandated reporters. John Taylor and Natalie Weatherford of Taylor & Ring represented the plaintiff.
After trial: No appeal of the verdict has been reported. A district spokesperson said the verdict was fully covered by the district's insurance carrier.
- $7.5 millionSettlementPaid
Prince George's County Pays Mother of Paralyzed Traffic-Stop Victim in Federal Civil Rights Suit
In March 2023, Prince George's County, Maryland agreed to pay $7.5 million to Rena Ward, the mother of Demonte Ward-Blake, and his estate. Ward-Blake was paralyzed after a county police officer slammed him, handcuffed, onto the pavement during an October 2019 traffic stop. The federal civil rights and wrongful death suit was settled without any admission of wrongdoing by the county.
After trial: The case settled before trial, so there was no verdict and no appeal in the civil action. Strong's separate criminal conviction was appealed.
Murphy Falcon & Murphy2023 · U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Greenbelt (No. TDC-22-0422)Read the full story → - $7.25 millionSettlementPaid
Jackson County Pays $7.25 Million After Man Died Of Dehydration And Malnutrition In Jail Isolation Cell
Joshua McLemore, 29, died on August 10, 2021, after 20 days locked alone in a padded isolation cell at the Jackson County Jail in Brownstown, Indiana, where he had been booked during a psychotic episode linked to untreated schizophrenia. He lost about 45 pounds and, according to the federal complaint, slept roughly 15 hours in total over those three weeks before jail staff sent him to a hospital; he was transferred to a Cincinnati hospital and died there of multiple organ failure. His aunt sued Jackson County, the sheriff and jail staff in federal court on behalf of his estate, and in December 2023 the county's $7.25 million settlement was made public, reported as the largest known payout over a jail death in Indiana. Separate claims against the jail's outsourced medical provider were not part of that settlement.
After trial: The $7.25 million settlement covered Jackson County, Sheriff Rick Meyer and jail staff only. The estate reached a separate settlement with the healthcare contractor in March 2024, on terms not made public.
Budge & Heipt, PLLC2023 · U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, New Albany DivisionRead the full story → - $6.8 millionVerdictPaid
Los Angeles Jury Finds City Grossly Negligent After Shelter Volunteer's Arm Is Mauled by Dog With Undocumented Bite History
Kelly Kaneko, then 36, was volunteering at a Los Angeles Animal Services shelter in Lincoln Heights in October 2019 when a 100-pound German Shepherd mix named Jaxx bit her arm and held on for more than five minutes. The dog's kennel card said nothing of his history, including a prior bite to his previous owner. At the end of May 2023, a Los Angeles jury found the City grossly negligent and awarded her $6.8 million.
After trial: The court docket records an amended judgment in November 2023 and an acknowledgment of full satisfaction of judgment filed in May 2024, followed by dismissal of the case. We found no appeal.
Greene Broillet & Wheeler2023 · Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Los AngelesRead the full story → - $5 millionSettlementPaid
$5 Million Settlement With Greenwich for Family of 15-Year-Old Who Died by Suicide After School Bullying
A 15-year-old Greenwich High School sophomore died by suicide on August 27, 2013, the first day of the school year, after more than four years of bullying at Western Middle School and the high school. His parents sued the Town of Greenwich and its Board of Education in 2015, alleging staff knew about more than 25 bullying reports and never followed the district's mandatory anti-bullying policy. After the Appellate Court rejected the board's sovereign immunity defense in 2018 and the Supreme Court declined review, the town agreed in February 2023 to pay $5 million weeks before jury selection, the largest school bullying settlement by a Connecticut municipality.
After trial: Settlement approved by Greenwich town boards in February 2023 and funded by $930,831.13 in town money plus the town's liability insurer. Before settlement, the trial court and Appellate Court rejected the sovereign immunity defense (184 Conn.
Silver Golub & Teitell LLP2023 · Stamford Superior Court, Connecticut (Stamford-Norwalk judicial district)Read the full story → - $2.9 millionSettlementPaid
$2.9 Million Settlement for Parents of Girl, 12, Who Died at Residential Facility
A twelve-year-old girl died while in the care of a residential treatment facility in North Dakota. Her parents' federal civil rights action was dismissed by the district court, reinstated by the Eighth Circuit in 2022, and settled on remand for $2.9 million, reported as the largest known civil rights settlement in the state.
After trial: Settlement, with no court finding of liability. The action was dismissed in October 2021, reinstated by the Eighth Circuit on August 2, 2022, and settled on remand, with dismissal entered April 19, 2023.
Robins Kaplan LLP2023 · U.S. District Court, District of North Dakota, Eastern Division (after reinstatement by the 8th Cir.)Read the full story → - $2.35 millionVerdictPaid
Jury Finds Delivery Maneuvers, Not Labor, Caused Newborn's Arm Injury
A Greene County jury found that Dr. Chandria Johnson's delivery maneuvers, rather than the natural forces of labor, caused a brachial plexus nerve injury to a newborn boy identified as K.L. during his November 2014 birth at a Mercy Clinic Springfield Communities facility. Despite six corrective surgeries, the boy was left with permanent weakness in his arm. The jury returned a verdict of $2,348,338.60 against Mercy Clinic Springfield Communities and Dr. Johnson, and because the injury predated Missouri's 2015 noneconomic damages cap statute, the noneconomic award was not subject to a cap.
After trial: The jury's full noneconomic award stood because the 2014 birth predates Missouri's 2015 malpractice damages cap. No appeal has been identified.
Johnson, Vorhees & Martucci2023 · Greene County Circuit Court, Springfield, MissouriRead the full story → - $2 millionPaid
Federal Court Holds Excess Insurer Must Cover $2 Million for Mother and Daughters Hurt in Head-On Truck Crash
A mother and her two teenage daughters were seriously hurt in an October 2018 head-on crash on North Carolina Highway 49 with a company truck driven by an unlicensed man. After the injury claims were resolved by agreement, a federal court held that the construction company's commercial excess policy covered the accident and that interest was owed on top. The Fourth Circuit affirmed in August 2025, and the family's total recovery reached $2,861,458.
After trial: Harford Mutual appealed, and the Fourth Circuit affirmed on both coverage and interest on August 8, 2025. North Carolina Lawyers Weekly reports a total recovery of $2,861,458 including interest and the underlying auto coverage.
Law Offices of James Scott Farrin2023 · U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, GreensboroRead the full story →
All 2023 verdicts and settlements
193 results, largest first
As court-appointed co-lead plaintiffs' counsel in AFFF MDL 2873, Paul J. Napoli of Napoli Shkolnik negotiated a settlement requiring 3M Company to pay up to $12.5 billion to public water systems contaminated by PFAS compounds in firefighting foam, the largest drinking-water settlement in American legal history.
A Riverside County jury awarded $2.28 billion on April 25, 2023, to a woman identified as Jane Doe who was sexually abused by her stepfather from age 5 until she was 14, at the family's Lake Elsinore home and at events and property of the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The stepfather, who had pleaded guilty in 1997 to lewd acts with a child under 14 and served three years in state prison, admitted the abuse at deposition, then skipped the first day of jury selection and withdrew his answer rather than face a bench warrant. The church settled for $1 million and the mother for $200,000 before trial. The verdict, $836 million in compensatory damages and $1.44 billion in punitive damages after three days of deliberation, is one of the largest ever returned for a single survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
Frantz Law Group, led by attorneys James Frantz and William Shinoff, represented nearly 1,000 public school districts across 38 states in multidistrict litigation against JUUL Labs, reaching a $1.7 billion settlement in 2023 that covered approximately 1,600 school districts, local governments, tribal entities, and individual consumers.
As court-appointed co-lead counsel in AFFF MDL 2873, Paul J. Napoli of Napoli Shkolnik helped negotiate a $1.185 billion class settlement with DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva to compensate public water systems across the United States for PFAS contamination tied to firefighting foam.
Retained as outside counsel to the Nevada Attorney General, Eglet Adams drove more than $1.1 billion in opioid settlements across 12 agreements with over 40 defendants, including Walgreens, McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and Johnson & Johnson.
A Philadelphia jury awarded roughly $976.5 million, including $800 million in punitive damages, after the rip-stitch seat belt in Francis Amagasu's 1992 Mitsubishi 3000GT tore during a rollover and left him quadriplegic. Daniel Sherry Jr., Nancy Winkler, and Jessica Colliver tried the case for the firm then known as Eisenberg, Rothweiler, Winkler, Eisenberg & Jeck, with co-counsel Kyle Farrar and Wes Ball of Houston's Kaster Lynch Farrar & Ball. On December 22, 2025 the Pennsylvania Superior Court vacated the judgment, which had grown to over $1 billion with delay damages, and ordered a new trial over the jury instructions. The retrial had not yet taken place as of this writing.
A federal court in Washington, D.C. awarded $807 million to 58 USS Cole bombing survivors and immediate family members after finding that Iran provided material support to the al-Qaeda operatives who carried out the 2000 attack.
A St. Louis County jury returned a $745 million verdict against nitrous oxide distributor United Brands and local head shop Coughing Cardinal after finding the companies conspired to sell Whip-It! canisters as an inhalant to a driver who passed out behind the wheel and fatally struck 25-year-old Marissa Politte outside her workplace.
A federal jury in Columbus assessed $787 million in damages against Moash Enterprise Company Limited, the Vietnamese manufacturer of a bunk bed that killed a two-year-old boy, after the company was defaulted for never appearing in the case. The court later cut the award to $615 million under Ohio's punitive damages cap, and nothing in the record shows the judgment has been collected.
A Cole County jury returned $1.56 billion in November 2023 across four plaintiffs whose claims were consolidated for one trial: three Roundup users who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma and the wife of one of them on a loss of consortium claim. The trial court later cut the punitive awards to roughly nine times each plaintiff's compensatory damages, bringing the judgment down to about $611 million, and the Missouri appellate courts left that judgment standing.
A Harris County jury awarded Mary Johnson $557 million against Union Pacific for a 2016 Houston train strike that cost her a leg, several fingers, and left her with a brain injury, a figure the trial court later cut and an appeals court reversed for a new trial.
A Rio Arriba County jury held Acadia Healthcare and its New Mexico foster care subsidiaries responsible for placing an 8-year-old girl with a foster father who raped her repeatedly, returning one of the largest single-plaintiff sexual abuse verdicts in the country.
A King County jury awarded $857 million in December 2023 to seven people, five former students and two parent volunteers, who said they were sickened by PCBs leaking from light fixtures at the Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Washington. The verdict included $73 million in compensatory damages and $784 million in punitive damages against Monsanto and its successor Pharmacia. In April 2024 a King County judge cut the punitive award to $365 million under Missouri's statutory cap on punitive damages, reducing the total to $438 million. Monsanto appealed, and Bayer said in February 2026 that Monsanto had settled the remaining Sky Valley jury verdicts on confidential terms, so what was ultimately paid is not public.
Acadia Healthcare agreed to pay $400 million to resolve three civil cases arising from its Desert Hills and Familyworks foster care program in New Mexico, where licensed foster parent Clarence Garcia sexually abused multiple children in his care.
A Dallas County jury found developer Greystar liable for the 2019 tower crane collapse that killed 29-year-old Kiersten Smith in her apartment, returning an $860 million verdict that Jason and Cory Itkin helped win for her family. The trial court cut the $500 million exemplary award under the Texas statutory cap before signing judgment in August 2023, entering $360,012,006 in compensatory damages jointly and severally against the three Greystar entities plus prejudgment interest, and Greystar's appeal, argued in February 2026, is undecided.
A San Antonio jury returned the largest sexual assault verdict in U.S. history against a sole assailant, awarding $325 million to a child sexually abused by her grandfather over multiple years.
On November 9, 2023, a Sarasota County jury awarded the Kowalski family more than $261 million against Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital: about $211.5 million in compensatory damages plus $50 million in punitive damages, in the case behind the Netflix documentary Take Care of Maya. None of that judgment stands today. The trial judge cut $47.5 million from the award in January 2024, and on October 29, 2025 Florida's Second District Court of Appeal reversed the judgment entirely, holding that the trial court misapplied the statutory immunity for good-faith child-abuse reporting, directing judgment for the hospital on several claims and ordering a new trial on the rest. In August 2026 the Florida Supreme Court declined to review that ruling, so the surviving claims head back to Sarasota County for a narrower retrial. AndersonGlenn tried the original case for the family, and this page documents the full arc, verdict and reversal alike.
A St. Charles County jury awarded $247.3 million to six women sexually assaulted by an unlicensed massage therapist at Oasis Foot Spa & Massage in St. Peters, finding the spa and its owner liable for hiring him without any background check and ignoring an early complaint. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in full in 2024.
San Francisco Unified School District's case was the first JUUL bellwether trial against Altria; after the plaintiffs rested, Altria agreed to pay $235 million to resolve roughly 6,000 pending e-vapor claims nationwide.
A Harris County jury awarded Laura Schneider and her three children $209.2 million after finding that Terra Energy Partners hid a known hantavirus danger that killed her husband, Karl.
A Philadelphia jury returned a $182.7 million verdict, later reaching $207.6 million with interest and upheld through the Pennsylvania Superior Court in July 2025, against the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for a 45-minute delay in performing a C-section on a mother with a known uterine infection, leaving her child with permanent cerebral palsy.
A Suffolk County jury awarded $200 million in October 2023, the largest wrongful death award in Boston history, against R.J. Reynolds for the lung cancer death of Rita Jones, who first received free Newport cigarettes as a teenager in 1964.
A Philadelphia jury awarded Ernest Caranci $175 million after finding that decades of Roundup use caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that Monsanto failed to warn of the risk. Kline & Specter tried the case, the first Roundup trial in Philadelphia, and the verdict was later upheld on appeal.
A King County jury awarded $165 million to eight former Sky Valley Education Center employees, including the estate of one deceased plaintiff, after finding Pharmacia LLC liable for selling PCB-containing fluorescent light ballasts without adequate warning.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.