Largest 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 →- $150 millionVerdictReduced from $368.6 millionPaidProduct Liability
The $368.6 Million Explorer Rollover Verdict Against Ford, the First Plaintiff Win in an Explorer Rollover Trial, Remitted to $150 Million by the Trial Court and Finally Resolved at an $82.6 Million Judgment After the U.S. Supreme Court Declined Review in 2009
In June 2004 a San Diego jury ordered Ford Motor Co. to pay $368.6 million to Benetta Buell-Wilson, a San Diego mother of two left paralyzed when her 1997 Explorer rolled four and a half times and the roof crushed onto her neck. It was Ford's first trial loss in an Explorer rollover case after a long string of defense verdicts. The honest frame: the trial court cut the award to $150 million, the Court of Appeal reduced it to $82.6 million in 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court sent it back after Philip Morris v. Williams, the Court of Appeal reinstated the $82.6 million in 2008, and Ford paid the judgment, with interest that pushed the punitive portion to about $87 million, after the Supreme Court declined review in late 2009. Dennis Schoville of Schoville & Arnell was lead trial counsel. The firm is no longer in active practice, and this page documents the case as part of the public record.
After trial: Remitted to $150 million by the trial court, reduced to $82.6 million on appeal in 2006, reinstated after two U.S. Supreme Court trips, and final when certiorari was denied in November 2009; Ford paid the judgment with interest.
Schoville & Arnell, LLP2004 · Superior Court, San Diego County, CARead the full story → - $56.01 millionVerdictReduced from $1.04 billionPaidProduct Liability
Livermore Retiree Whose Lymphoma Spread to Her Brain Holds a $56 Million Roundup Judgment Through the U.S. Supreme Court
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: The jury's $1.0372 billion award to Alberta Pilliod was reduced by the trial court on Monsanto's new-trial motion under Code of Civil Procedure section 662.5: noneconomic damages were recalculated on the trial evidence and punitive damages were capped at a four-to-one ratio under State Farm v. Campbell, producing a judgment of $56,005,830 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: The jury's $1.018 billion award to Alva Pilliod was reduced by the trial court on Monsanto's new-trial motion under Code of Civil Procedure section 662.5: noneconomic damages were recalculated on the trial evidence and punitive damages were capped at a four-to-one ratio under State Farm v. Campbell, producing a judgment of $30,736,480 that he accepted.
Wisner Baum LLP2019 · Alameda County Superior Court, Oakland (Judge Winifred Y. Smith)Read the full story → - $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: The jury's $75,000,000 punitive award was reduced to $20,000,000 by the district court on July 15, 2019 as constitutionally excessive under the due process guideposts of BMW v. Gore and State Farm v.
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, and no Court of Appeal decision addressing it turned up in a September 2026 search of the California appellate reporters and CourtListener. A district spokesperson told reporters the verdict was fully covered by the district's insurance carrier, which is the basis for recording it as paid.
- $23.72 millionVerdictReduced from $296.2 millionPaidProduct Liability
The $296 Million Bronco Rollover Verdict Against Ford, Tried by the Firm's Now Retired Founder Joe Carcione Jr. and Ultimately 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: The jury's $289.25 million verdict was reduced twice. The trial court cut punitive damages from $250 million to $39.25 million on due-process grounds (one-to-one ratio), which Johnson accepted, leaving $78.5 million.
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: The $45.4 million verdict was apportioned, leaving Los Angeles County liable for about $20.7 million as its 45 percent share. WitnessLA reported in January 2020 that the county reduced that to a $10.5 million judgment and paid the first $5.5 million during the 2018 to 2019 fiscal year, so the ranked figure here is the $10.5 million that stood against the county.
171 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 six people, including four children, were trapped and severely burned when the defectively placed fuel tank on a 1979 Chevy Malibu ruptured in a rear-end crash on Christmas Eve 1993.
On July 9, 1999, a Los Angeles County jury found General Motors liable for the fuel tank design of a 1979 Chevrolet Malibu that caught fire after a drunk driver rear-ended the car on Christmas Eve 1993, severely burning Patricia Anderson, her four children and family friend Jo Tigner. The jury awarded $107.6 million in compensatory damages and $4.8 billion in punitive damages, at the time the largest personal injury award in the country. Superior Court Judge Ernest G. Williams later cut the punitive award to $1.09 billion, leaving the compensatory award intact for a total of about $1.2 billion, while backing the jury's finding that General Motors had positioned the tank to protect profit rather than passengers. General Motors said it would appeal the reduced judgment. No appellate decision in the case was ever published, and what General Motors ultimately paid was never made public.
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. The honest frame: 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.
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.
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.
Beasley Allen led thousands of individual plaintiffs and hundreds of school districts to a $235 million settlement with Altria Group, which had invested in Juul and its marketing of flavored e-cigarettes to minors.
A San Diego jury awarded $223 million to a securities broker whose malpractice attorney had allowed his fraud claims against Prudential Securities to be silently released in a class action settlement, with James P. Frantz representing the broker in the ensuing litigation.
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, and the case went up on appeal.
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 jury awarded $198.17 million to the Iskander family after two young brothers were struck and killed in a Westlake Village crosswalk, with Nick Movagar of M&Y Personal Injury Lawyers serving as co-counsel alongside Brian Panish.
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.
In June 2004 a San Diego jury ordered Ford Motor Co. to pay $368.6 million to Benetta Buell-Wilson, a San Diego mother of two left paralyzed when her 1997 Explorer rolled four and a half times and the roof crushed onto her neck. It was Ford's first trial loss in an Explorer rollover case after a long string of defense verdicts. The honest frame: the trial court cut the award to $150 million, the Court of Appeal reduced it to $82.6 million in 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court sent it back after Philip Morris v. Williams, the Court of Appeal reinstated the $82.6 million in 2008, and Ford paid the judgment, with interest that pushed the punitive portion to about $87 million, after the Supreme Court declined review in late 2009. Dennis Schoville of Schoville & Arnell was lead trial counsel. The firm is no longer in active practice, and this page documents the case as part of the public record.
As co-lead class counsel, Kenneth McClain helped secure a $145 million settlement, approved by a federal judge in October 2024, for roughly nine million Kia and Hyundai owners whose vehicles lacked standard engine immobilizers.
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.
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.
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.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.