Top California Personal Injury Recoveries Confirmed Paid
Personal injury results in California where the record shows the money was paid, or the defendant is an insurer or institution that pays, ranked by amount.
Browse personal injury lawyers in California →- $56.01 millionVerdictReduced from $1.04 billionPaidProduct Liability
$1.04 Billion Roundup Verdict for Livermore Retiree With Brain Lymphoma
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.
After trial: Reduced and paid. The jury's $1.0372 billion award was reduced by the trial court to a $56,005,830 judgment that she accepted.
Wisner Baum LLP2019 · Alameda County Superior Court, Oakland (Judge Winifred Y. Smith)Read the full story → - $30.74 millionVerdictReduced from $1.02 billionPaidProduct Liability
Livermore Man Diagnosed With Stage IV Lymphoma After Decades of Roundup Use Holds a $30.7 Million Judgment
Alva Pilliod mixed and sprayed Roundup on the family's Livermore-area properties from 1982 until illness stopped him in 2011, the year he was diagnosed at 69 with stage IV diffuse large B-cell lymphoma in his bones. On May 13, 2019, an Alameda County jury awarded him about $18 million in compensatory damages and $1 billion in punitive damages, alongside a separate award to his wife. Judge Winifred Smith reduced his judgment to $30,736,480, the Court of Appeal affirmed in August 2021, and the California and U.S. Supreme Courts declined review.
After trial: Reduced and paid. The jury's $1.018 billion award was reduced by the trial court to a $30,736,480 judgment that he accepted.
Wisner Baum LLP2019 · Alameda County Superior Court, Oakland (Judge Winifred Y. Smith)Read the full story → - $30 millionSettlementPaidCivil Rights
San Diego Pays $30 Million Over Fatal Police Shooting of a Fleeing Teenager
The Wilson family's 16-year-old son was shot and killed by a San Diego police officer on January 28, 2025, seconds after he ran into the officer's path while fleeing gunfire from another teenager at Santa Fe Depot. His parents sued the City of San Diego and the officer in San Diego Superior Court in June 2025, alleging the officer fired twice into the boy's back without warning, in violation of his civil rights and of department use of force standards. The San Diego City Council voted unanimously on December 9, 2025 to approve a $30 million settlement, with the city paying $5 million and the rest drawn from a public liability fund shared by member municipalities. San Diego attorneys King Aminpour and Michael VanGalio worked the case alongside lead attorney Nicholas Rowley.
After trial: Settlement approved by unanimous vote of the San Diego City Council, with no admission of liability. It is not subject to appeal, and the city has approved and funded it.
- $25.27 millionVerdictReduced from $80.3 millionPaidProduct Liability
Sonoma County Man's Roundup Cancer Case Ends in $25.3 Million Judgment After an $80 Million Verdict
Edwin Hardeman, 70, sprayed Roundup on his Sonoma County property for about 26 years and was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2015. In the first federal Roundup bellwether trial, a unanimous San Francisco jury found in March 2019 that the herbicide was a substantial factor in his cancer and that Monsanto failed to warn, awarding $5,267,634 in compensatory damages and $75 million in punitive damages. Judge Vince Chhabria cut the punitive award to $20 million as constitutionally excessive, leaving a $25,267,634 judgment. The Ninth Circuit affirmed in May 2021 and the U.S. Supreme Court denied Monsanto's petition in June 2022.
After trial: Reduced and paid. The district court cut the $75,000,000 punitive award to $20,000,000 on July 15, 2019, leaving a $25,267,634.10 judgment.
Wagstaff Law Firm2019 · U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San FranciscoRead the full story → - $25 millionVerdictPaidSexual Abuse
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.
- $23.72 millionVerdictReduced from $296.2 millionPaidProduct Liability
$296 Million Bronco Rollover Verdict Against Ford, Paid Out at $23.7 Million After Four Years of Appeals
A Stanislaus County jury awarded $6,226,793 in compensatory damages and $290 million in punitive damages against Ford Motor Company after a 1978 Bronco rolled over and its roof collapsed, killing three members of the Romo family and orphaning three children. Joseph W. Carcione Jr., the retired founder of the practice that continues today as Carcione, Henderson & Markowitz, tried the case. The punitive award was cut to $23,723,287 in 2003 after the U.S. Supreme Court's State Farm v. Campbell decision, and Ford paid the reduced judgment.
After trial: The punitive award was reduced to $23,723,287 in 2003 after State Farm v. Campbell; Ford paid the reduced judgment plus compensatory damages and interest in 2004.
Carcione, Henderson & Markowitz, LLP1999 · Stanislaus County Superior Court, Modesto, CaliforniaRead the full story → - $20.51 millionVerdictReduced from $289.3 millionPaidProduct Liability
Benicia School Groundskeeper Wins the First Roundup Cancer Verdict Against Monsanto
Dewayne "Lee" Johnson sprayed Monsanto's Ranger Pro and Roundup Pro on Benicia school grounds for two to three years, was soaked by a burst hose in 2014, and was diagnosed that October with mycosis fungoides, a rare non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. In August 2018 a San Francisco jury found Monsanto liable for failure to warn and design defect and returned $289.25 million, the first Roundup cancer verdict in the country. The trial judge cut punitive damages to match compensatory damages, for $78.5 million, and the Court of Appeal in July 2020 reduced the award to $20.5 million while affirming liability and malice. The California Supreme Court denied review in October 2020 and Bayer paid the judgment late that year.
After trial: Reduced twice and paid. The trial court cut punitive damages from $250 million to $39.25 million; the Court of Appeal (July 20, 2020) then reduced future noneconomic damages to $4 million and cut punitive damages to match, leaving $20,506,418.64.
Wisner Baum LLP2018 · San Francisco County Superior Court, San Francisco (Judge Suzanne Ramos Bolanos), Case No. CGC-16-550128Read the full story → - $10.5 millionVerdictReduced from $45.4 millionPaidSexual Abuse
Jury Finds Los Angeles County 45 Percent Liable For Failing To Stop Child Sexual Abuse
A Los Angeles County jury found the county's Department of Children and Family Services 45 percent responsible for years of sexual abuse a girl suffered in her El Monte home, returning a $45.4 million verdict in July 2018 and splitting the rest of the fault between the girl's mother and four men who lived in the apartment. Two DCFS social workers had been monitoring the family and knew a man with an arrest record for sexual abuse of a minor was staying there, but never called the county hotline or the police. The county's 45 percent share, about $20.7 million, was later brought down to a $10.5 million judgment, of which the county paid $5.5 million in the 2018 to 2019 fiscal year. David Ring and Louanne Masry represented the girl at trial.
After trial: Reduced and paid in part. The $45.4 million verdict left Los Angeles County liable for about $20.7 million as its 45 percent share, and the county reduced that to a $10.5 million judgment, paying the first $5.5 million in the 2018 to 2019 fiscal year (WitnessLA, January 2020).
- $6.8 millionVerdictPaidPremises Liability
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 → - $6.5 millionSettlementPaidCivil Rights
San Diego County Pays $6.5 Million to Man Beaten by Deputy and Bitten by K-9 During 2014 Stop
Mickail Myles sued San Diego County and Deputy Jeremy Banks over a Sept. 5, 2014 traffic stop near Fallbrook in which he was punched and bitten by a sheriff's K-9. A federal jury awarded him $5 million in October 2022 on excessive force and negligent supervision claims, after the court sanctioned the county for withholding records. The Ninth Circuit upheld liability but ordered the damages cut or retried, and in 2026 the county agreed to pay $6.5 million.
After trial: The jury's $5 million verdict was challenged on appeal, and in May 2025 the Ninth Circuit upheld liability but ordered a remittitur capped at $1.5 million or a new damages trial. The case then settled for $6.5 million, which the settlement filing describes as resolving the damages claim and attorney fee requests together.
Greene Broillet & Wheeler2026 · U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, San DiegoRead the full story →
All California verdicts and settlements
215 results, largest first
Frantz Law Group, representing roughly 5,000 victims, helped negotiate a $13.5 billion PG&E bankruptcy settlement covering tens of thousands of survivors and families from the 2015 Butte, 2017 North Bay, and 2018 Camp wildfires.
As co-lead counsel in the federal Roundup multidistrict litigation and the first firm to sue Monsanto in 2015, Weitz and Luxenberg helped negotiate a $10.9 billion settlement resolving approximately 125,000 non-Hodgkin lymphoma claims against Bayer-owned Monsanto.
Acting as outside trial counsel for Los Angeles County, the firm then known as Greene, Broillet, Taylor, Wheeler and Panish helped recover approximately $3.3 billion for the county through the 1998 nationwide Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.
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.
A Los Angeles jury ordered General Motors to pay $4.9 billion after a 1979 Chevrolet Malibu's rear-mounted fuel tank ruptured and burned six occupants in a rear-end crash, the largest US personal-injury verdict at the time.
On October 6, 2025, a Los Angeles County jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $966 million to the family of Mae K. Moore, a mother of three who died of mesothelioma in December 2021 at age 88 after decades of using the company's talc-based Baby Powder and Shower to Shower. The award comprised $16 million in compensatory damages and $950 million in punitive damages, reported at the time as the largest talc-mesothelioma verdict ever returned against Johnson & Johnson. On March 13, 2026, the trial judge, Ruth Ann Kwan, vacated the entire $950 million punitive award, finding the malice showing insufficient, while leaving the $16 million compensatory judgment intact. Both sides have said they will appeal. Dean Omar Branham Shirley tried the case for the Moore family, and this page documents it as part of the public record.
A federal jury in San Francisco found Google liable for invasion of privacy and intrusion upon seclusion after the company kept collecting data from third-party apps for users who had switched off the Web & App Activity setting. On September 3, 2025, the jury awarded $425,651,947 in compensatory damages and declined to award punitive damages. The award is a single class-wide figure shared by two nationwide classes of about 98 million users, not one person's recovery. The judge refused to set the verdict aside in August 2026, and Google has appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
An L.A. jury awarded Eva Echeverria $417 million after finding that decades of Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder use caused her ovarian cancer, though the trial judge later vacated the verdict and the Court of Appeal affirmed the vacatur.
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.
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.
Jamie Lebovitz served on the federal MDL Plaintiff's Steering Committee for the Alaska Airlines Flight 261 disaster, representing 18 families in confidential individual settlements as part of a broader litigation that recovered more than $300 million for surviving relatives of the 88 people killed.
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 Los Angeles jury awarded $208,821,015 to Rhoda Evans, who developed mesothelioma after decades of washing the asbestos-laden work clothes of her husband, a Los Angeles DWP pipe cutter, with $200 million in punitive damages assessed against pipe maker CertainTeed. William Levin and Laurel Simes tried the case for the plaintiffs. The full number did not stand: months later the trial judge struck the punitive award as unconstitutional and ordered a new trial on all issues, and the Court of Appeal affirmed that order in 2012. No retrial result or settlement was ever reported.
A Los Angeles County jury ordered Rebecca Grossman and former Major League pitcher Scott Erickson to pay $198.17 million for the deaths of two brothers, ages 11 and 8, struck in a marked crosswalk near their home.
A Los Angeles County jury awarded $150,750,000 against truck driver Rudolph Ortiz and Bhandal Bros. Trucking for a girl who was orphaned when her family's SUV struck an 18-wheeler parked without lights on the shoulder of the 210 Freeway and caught fire, killing her parents and eldest brother. Brian Brandt tried the case for the plaintiff. The verdict did not stand: on February 3, 2014, Judge Marc Marmaro granted the defense a new trial, finding the award excessive, and the case then settled in April 2014 on confidential terms before any retrial.
McGee Lerer Ogrin represented 14 of the 124 survivors whose claims were resolved in a $122.5 million settlement with the City of Santa Monica over decades of child sexual abuse by a PAL volunteer the city failed to stop.
A Riverside County jury found Moreno Valley Unified School District 90 percent at fault for keeping teacher Thomas Lee West in the classroom for two decades despite molestation complaints, awarding $135 million to two former students he abused.
As court-appointed lead plaintiffs' counsel, Morgan & Morgan's John Yanchunis negotiated the $117.5 million settlement resolving claims from Yahoo's 2013-2016 data breaches, the largest theft of personal data in history, touching roughly 3 billion accounts worldwide. Judge Lucy Koh approved the fund in 2020 after rejecting an earlier version as inadequate.
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.
On September 16, 2025, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury found Joseph Ruffalo, an 85-year-old former music manager and 1980s film producer, liable for sexual battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress against his former stepdaughter, A.Z., who testified that he abused her from 1991, when she was six, until 2007, when she was 22. The unanimous jury deliberated two hours and forty minutes and awarded $85 million in compensatory damages and $30 million in punitive damages. A.Z. had reported the abuse to police in the United States and Britain without result; Ruffalo was never charged. Her mother was a co-defendant and resolved the claims against her before trial. Ruffalo told the jury he could not pay.
Gillin, Jacobson, Ellis and Larsen recovered $111.7 million for 186 patients who underwent medically unjustified cardiac procedures at Tenet Healthcare's Redding Medical Center, the largest single-firm share of a $395 million mass settlement.
In July 2023, after a two-phase trial before Judge Cary Nishimoto in Los Angeles County Superior Court, a jury awarded roughly $107 million, $32 million compensatory and $75 million punitive, to the family of Joel Hernandezcueva, a janitor who died of pleural mesothelioma in 2014 in his mid-40s after asbestos exposure at the Park Place complex in Irvine. The jury found raw-asbestos supplier Union Carbide acted with malice and assigned it the largest share of fault. On December 12, 2023, Judge Nishimoto set the verdict aside in its entirety, granting judgment notwithstanding the verdict and a new trial on findings of juror misconduct, misconduct by plaintiffs' counsel, insufficient evidence, and excessive damages. Plaintiffs' counsel said they would appeal, and no published decision reinstating the verdict appears in the public record as of this writing. Dean Omar Branham Shirley tried the 2023 case, and this page documents it as part of the public record.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.