Alaska Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements

Phyllis Rivers, pregnant, was treated at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage. Her doctors noted at least three indicators of infective endocarditis, rejected that diagnosis in favor of pregnancy-induced vasculitis, stopped her antibiotics after four days and sent her home. Untreated, the infection caused a stroke that left her paralyzed. After a bench trial under the Federal Tort Claims Act the court entered a $22,000,000 judgment against the United States and found the doctors reckless, which lifted Alaska's $400,000 malpractice cap. The Ninth Circuit affirmed in 2018.

In 2011 Mardi Strong, a construction worker and a member of the Yakama Nation, went to the Alaska Native Medical Center's emergency room and family clinic three separate times with worsening cellulitis and early sepsis. Staff diagnosed shingles each time and sent her home. She returned in septic shock, dry gangrene set in, and all four of her limbs were amputated. Her Federal Tort Claims Act case was tried in March 2018 and settled for $21,100,000 while the parties waited for the judge's decision.

On July 1, 2018 Aaron Thomas Smith of Eagle River died on the Seward Highway when Alaska State Trooper Richard Chambers, spotting a speeding car going the other way, braked hard and pulled a U-turn across the highway in front of him. Troopers first blamed vehicles following too closely. In depositions, department officials conceded U-turn training was optional at the academy and Chambers had never had any in the field. The state's own settlement memo concluded it was liable. The State of Alaska settled with his widow for $3,000,000 in 2023.

In January 2016 Dietrich Mael heard the boiler in his family's Chefornak home whistling and went to check it. It exploded, threw him against a wall, sprayed him with scalding water and glycol and knocked him out. The home's owner, the AVCP Regional Housing Authority, had promised in the family's lease-purchase contract to inspect the boiler and had not; the pressure relief valve was rusted through. A Bethel jury put all the fault on the authority and awarded $3,427,000. Alaska's cap cut the noneconomic portion to $1,000,000, and the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed $2,847,000 in 2022.

Dr. Peggy Downing, a 60-year-old Alaska obstetrician-gynecologist, was rear-ended by a Shoreside Petroleum truck in June 2017 and suffered bruising, broken ribs and a traumatic brain injury. After a bench trial in Palmer and a remand on lost earning capacity, the superior court entered a total judgment of $2,566,155.58 against Shoreside Petroleum and its driver. The Alaska Supreme Court affirmed on January 17, 2025.

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.

An 18-year-old died in May 2005 when his snow machine went into a hole in the ice near Barrow that North Slope Borough Public Works had dug. His mother, Isabel Brower, sued the Borough, and an August 2007 jury found it negligent and a legal cause of his death. The jury awarded $1,756,365. Alaska's cap on noneconomic damages cut the award to $1,280,675, and the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed in 2009.

James Rider, 31, of Wasilla, told staff at the Mat-Su Pretrial Facility in Palmer that he was having thoughts of suicide when he was booked in August 2022. He was put on precaution for a day, then housed with other inmates, then, about eleven days after booking, moved to a cell alone. Within hours he hanged himself with bedsheets. The ACLU of Alaska sued the Department of Corrections on behalf of his brother and the mother of his child. In March 2026 the state made an offer of judgment for $500,000, with a clause saying it admitted no fault, and the family accepted.

Paul Grosz was standing on homemade scaffolding, helping his friend Gregory Kisling hang a crucifix above a staircase in Kisling's home, when the wire holding the crucifix broke. He fell and suffered broken ribs, a spinal fracture and a traumatic brain injury. A jury put his noneconomic damages at $1,200,000, twice what he asked for, but found him 75 percent at fault. The fight that followed was over arithmetic: apply Alaska's $400,000 cap first, or the fault split first. In March 2025 the Alaska Supreme Court held fault comes first, which left a $300,000 judgment.