Largest Car Accident Personal Injury Verdicts Never Collected
Personal injury verdicts for car accident cases that were awarded and stand, but that the record shows could not be collected: a defendant who was uninsured, closed, bankrupt, or in prison. Each is ranked at what the court awarded and labeled.
- $301.04 billionVerdictNot collectableTX
$301 Billion Dram-Shop Verdict Against a Closed Bar, the Largest Jury Award Ever Recorded
On December 7, 2021, a Nueces County jury in Corpus Christi returned $1.04 billion in actual damages and $300 billion in exemplary damages, about $301.04 billion in total, against Beer Belly's Sports Bar and its owner for overserving a driver who killed Tamra Kay Kindred, 59, and her 16-year-old granddaughter in a 2017 crash. It was reported as the largest jury verdict ever recorded, and it was built to be symbolic: the bar had closed in 2019, Texas does not require bars to carry liquor liability insurance, and the family and its lawyers said openly that they expected to recover nothing and sought the number as a public statement against drunk driving. John Flood of Flood Trial Lawyers was lead counsel, with Sico, Hoelscher & Harris LLP as co-counsel; Craig Sico delivered the closing argument that asked jurors to decide how loudly their voice would be heard.
After trial: Largely symbolic award. The bar closed in 2019 and the family said it expected to collect nothing; the verdict was sought as a public statement against drunk driving.
Sico Hoelscher Harris LLP2021 · Nueces County District Court, Corpus Christi, TXRead the full story → - $159 millionVerdictNot collectableIN
$159 Million Verdict for Woman Left Quadriplegic by Drunk Driver Doing 79 in a 40 Zone
On October 18, 2020 Ryann Early, drunk and doing about 79 mph in a 40 zone, crossed into oncoming traffic on Albert S. White Drive in Whitestown and hit Sherry Schnee head-on. She broke her neck and is quadriplegic. He went to prison. On January 11, 2024 a Boone County jury awarded her $84,000,000 and her husband $75,000,000. Early is an individual with no insurer identified, and his own lawyer said afterward he wished there were actual dollars behind the number.
After trial: The verdict stands as returned, and no appeal of the civil judgment has been reported. Collection is unlikely: Ryann Early is serving a six-year sentence and no insurer has been named.
Waldron Tate Land LLC and Hume Smith Geddes Green & Simmons, LLP2024 · Boone Superior Court, Lebanon INRead the full story → - $75 millionVerdictNot collectableMO
St. Charles County Jury Awards $75 Million to the Parents of a 21-Year-Old Killed by a Driver Fleeing Police
A St. Charles County jury awarded $75 million, including $25 million in punitive damages, to the parents of Krystofer Batsell, a 21-year-old killed when a driver fleeing police at more than 100 mph crashed into his car. The defendant is serving a 15-year prison sentence for second-degree murder, and the judgment is effectively uncollectable.
After trial: The judgment is effectively uncollectable: Richardson is imprisoned, and no insurer or institutional defendant remains in the case.
- $60 millionNot collectableUT
$60 Million Judgment Against a Drunk Driver Who Killed a Mother and Her Son on the I-15 Shoulder
On Halloween night 2021 Season Dow's car ran out of gas on Interstate 15 in Orem and she stopped on the shoulder with her hazard lights on. Kesley Pope, 22, driving her father's uninsured truck at about twice the legal blood alcohol limit, drove straight into it. Season Dow died at the scene and her 16-year-old son died in hospital. Pope is in prison. In June 2026, after a two-day civil trial, Judge Derek Pullan ordered her to pay the family $60,000,000.
After trial: Bench judgment after a two-day trial in April 2026, with damages ordered in June 2026. No appeal or post-judgment motion has been reported.
Flickinger Boulton Robson Weeks2026 · Fourth Judicial District Court, Utah County, Provo UTRead the full story → - $21.36 millionVerdictReduced from $30.5 millionNot collectableNJ
Driver Left a Ventilator-Dependent Quadriplegic in a Stop Sign Crash Wins $21.36 Million Judgment
James McAlonan was left a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic after Mildred Tracy drove through a stop sign in Harrison Township, New Jersey, and his Toyota Echo struck the side of her Ford Explorer. The trial judge granted McAlonan judgment against Tracy on negligence and proximate cause, the jury cleared codefendant Toyota on a companion airbag design claim, and the jury awarded $30,514,352.25. Because McAlonan was not wearing his seatbelt, the jury assigned him 30 percent comparative fault, and the court molded the verdict to a $21,360,046.65 judgment against Tracy. The Appellate Division affirmed in 2011, rejecting McAlonan's appeal of the defense verdict for Toyota. Mati Jarve, now of Jarve Granato Starr, tried and argued the case for McAlonan.
After trial: Reduced and affirmed. The New Jersey Appellate Division affirmed on January 3, 2011.
Jarve Granato Starr, LLC2008 · Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Gloucester CountyRead the full story → - $20.75 millionVerdictReduced from $38.5 millionNot collectableKS
Kansas Teen Paralyzed in Rear-End Crash Wins $38.5 Million Jury Verdict
Kara Hansen was a 16-year-old Riverton, Kansas high school student when Corbin Hamilton rear-ended her 1966 Ford Mustang in Cherokee County on April 9, 2014, breaking her neck and leaving her paralyzed from the chest down. After a five-day trial in Cherokee County District Court, a jury found Hamilton fully at fault and awarded Hansen $38.5 million, including $18 million for future medical and life-care costs and $18 million in noneconomic damages. Kansas's statutory cap on noneconomic damages, which applied to claims arising before July 1, 2014 and was not struck down until more than a year after this trial, held that portion of the award to $250,000, putting the judgment that could be entered at roughly $20.75 million. Hamilton carried only a small liability insurance policy, leaving full recovery in doubt.
After trial: Reduced by Kansas's noneconomic cap: the $38.5 million verdict, with $18 million noneconomic capped at $250,000, comes to roughly $20.75 million, which is the figure ranked. The defendant carried only a small insurance policy.
Johnson, Vorhees & Martucci2018 · Cherokee County District Court, Columbus, KansasRead the full story → - $1.35 millionNot collectableNJ
Wildwood Waverunner Collision Leaves Teenager With Shattered Leg, $1.35 Million Judgment
A federal judge in Camden, New Jersey, found a Connecticut boater primarily responsible for a 2007 waverunner collision off Wildwood that broke a 14-year-old passenger's leg. After a bench trial on liability, Judge Joseph E. Irenas of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey ruled that watercraft operator Marc M. Roy, Jr. was 80 percent at fault and fellow operator George R. Djukanovic, Jr. was 20 percent at fault, while finding the rental company, Lucky Fin Water Sports, LLC, not negligent. The case ended in a $1,350,000 judgment reported in June 2012. The court's opinion lists Westmoreland Vesper & Quattrone, P.A., by Thomas J. Vesper, as counsel for the plaintiff. Roy never answered the lawsuit or appeared in court, and the injured boy's father said the judgment was probably uncollectible.
After trial: The $1,350,000 comes from a June 2012 Press of Atlantic City report of the judgment. Roy never appeared in the case, and the injured boy's father called the debt probably uncollectible.
Westmoreland Vesper Quattrone & Beers, P.A.2012 · U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey (Camden), admiralty jurisdictionRead the full story →
243 results, largest first
On December 7, 2021, a Nueces County jury in Corpus Christi returned $1.04 billion in actual damages and $300 billion in exemplary damages, about $301.04 billion in total, against Beer Belly's Sports Bar and its owner for overserving a driver who killed Tamra Kay Kindred, 59, and her 16-year-old granddaughter in a 2017 crash. It was reported as the largest jury verdict ever recorded, and it was built to be symbolic: the bar had closed in 2019, Texas does not require bars to carry liquor liability insurance, and the family and its lawyers said openly that they expected to recover nothing and sought the number as a public statement against drunk driving. John Flood of Flood Trial Lawyers was lead counsel, with Sico, Hoelscher & Harris LLP as co-counsel; Craig Sico delivered the closing argument that asked jurors to decide how loudly their voice would be heard.
An Oakland County jury awarded $896.5 million to a young boy who was struck by a prototype test car during a student field trip at a Continental test track, reported as the largest verdict in Michigan history. The award is pre-appeal: post-trial motions are pending, Continental never made a settlement offer, and the amount could still be reduced.
A Bexar County jury awarded roughly $831 million to Blas Mendez Jr., a longtime Seguin ISD special education behavior specialist left partially paralyzed after his motorcycle hit wreckage left in the road by an 18-year-old drunk driver who had been served at Koozies Icehouse & Grill in New Braunfels. Todd A. Hunter of Hunter Trial Law tried the dram shop case with E. Chevo Pastrano and Ginna G. Pastrano of The Pastrano Law Firm. The award was reported as the largest verdict ever returned by a San Antonio jury, and the bar had already closed by the time it came in, so the family is not expected to collect most, if any, of it.
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.
An Ector County jury awarded $262.5 million to Isaac Sanchez, left quadriplegic when a drunk driver who had been served 19 drinks at Linx Bar and Grill rear-ended his motorcycle at a North Odessa intersection in June 2021.
On October 18, 2020 Ryann Early, drunk and doing about 79 mph in a 40 zone, crossed into oncoming traffic on Albert S. White Drive in Whitestown and hit Sherry Schnee head-on. She broke her neck and is quadriplegic. He went to prison. On January 11, 2024 a Boone County jury awarded her $84,000,000 and her husband $75,000,000. Early is an individual with no insurer identified, and his own lawyer said afterward he wished there were actual dollars behind the number.
A Morgan & Morgan trial team won a $120 million Alachua County verdict for Jacob Rodgers, paralyzed at 20 when a Gainesville Regional Utilities driver ran a stop sign and broadsided the pickup he was riding in. After appeals and remittitur cut the judgment to $18.3 million, the case settled for $11 million, most of it paid through a Florida legislative claims bill that became law in 2025.
A Clark County jury awarded Timothy Kuhn $114 million after USAA spent years stonewalling his claim from a 2018 rear-end collision it had originally conceded was not his fault.
A Travis County jury found a Wings 'N More restaurant liable for overserving a drunk driver who crashed into a family's car, awarding $112.9 million after a six-year-old girl suffered a traumatic brain injury, cardiac arrest, and the loss of vision in one eye.
A Cook County jury found the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority negligent for a 2016 construction zone crash on I-90 that killed one limousine passenger and left Rob Rosá paralyzed from the neck down, awarding Rosá and his spouse just over $104 million on October 9, 2025.
A Clark County jury awarded $101 million against Progressive, $1 million compensatory and $100 million punitive, after the insurer delayed paying Hal Goldblatt's medical bills for months following a 2022 crosswalk collision that caused a traumatic brain injury.
A Nassau County jury awarded $96,906,004 to a woman who suffered catastrophic brain injuries at age 15 at an intersection the county had been warned about for years, making it the second-largest verdict in Nassau County history.
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.
A Manhattan jury awarded $85 million to a writer and former New York Times columnist who was severely injured by a double-decker sightseeing bus while lawfully crossing the street.
Francisco Briones, 21, was turning left on a green light on his way to a 5 a.m. warehouse shift in Oxnard on March 23, 2013, when Christopher Zink, drunk at 0.14 percent, awake for 24 hours and asleep at the wheel, ran a red light at about 50 mph and hit him. Briones' C4-5 vertebrae ruptured and he was paralyzed from the neck down. Zink pleaded guilty to felony DUI causing injury and went to prison for seven years; his insurer, Nationwide, had refused a timely policy-limits demand. On January 22, 2016, a Ventura County jury found Zink 100 percent at fault, found malice, and awarded $125,168,202, half of it punitive damages. The court rejected Zink's Proposition 213 motion to strip the pain-and-suffering award but reduced the judgment post-trial to about $85 million.
A St. Charles County jury awarded $75 million, including $25 million in punitive damages, to the parents of Krystofer Batsell, a 21-year-old killed when a driver fleeing police at more than 100 mph crashed into his car. The defendant is serving a 15-year prison sentence for second-degree murder, and the judgment is effectively uncollectable.
A Boone County jury found that Eaton Asphalt's improper repaving of Richwood Road created the edge drop-off that sent a flatbed truck into Amy Skiba's car, and awarded her three children $74 million.
On September 28, 2017, a Manhattan jury awarded Morgan Wang $71 million against Neil Sexton, the driver who fell asleep at the wheel on state Route 79 in August 2012 on the way to Cornell University. Wang, a passenger, suffered a fractured back and a spinal cord injury. The award was $5 million for past pain and suffering, $6 million for future pain and suffering and $60 million for future medical care.
A Platte County jury returned a record $70 million verdict after an eight-year-old boy died and his six-year-old sister was seriously injured when a distracted driver rear-ended their grandparents' car in a highway construction zone.
The City of Seattle and its five insurers paid $65.75 million to Brooke Taylor, a 38-year-old Susman Godfrey partner who suffered a catastrophic traumatic brain injury when a Seattle Fire Department aid unit went through a red light at Fourth Avenue and Seneca Street in April 2016 and struck her Porsche, spinning it into a signal box and a tree. Todd Gardner of Swanson Gardner Meyers negotiated the settlement, approved in King County Superior Court in late December 2018 and reported as the largest personal injury settlement in city history and likely the largest in Washington state.
Clifford Law Offices secured a $60 million settlement for Sarah Grasser, 31, left paraplegic when another driver swerved to avoid a deep pothole in an I-55 work zone and struck her car, rolling it into a ditch.
On Halloween night 2021 Season Dow's car ran out of gas on Interstate 15 in Orem and she stopped on the shoulder with her hazard lights on. Kesley Pope, 22, driving her father's uninsured truck at about twice the legal blood alcohol limit, drove straight into it. Season Dow died at the scene and her 16-year-old son died in hospital. Pope is in prison. In June 2026, after a two-day civil trial, Judge Derek Pullan ordered her to pay the family $60,000,000.
A Bexar County jury returned a $59.8 million verdict, later converted to a $60.09 million judgment, for 23-year-old Armando Guerrero III after a drunk driver ran a red light at nearly twice the posted speed limit on Southwest Military Drive.
A Middlesex Superior Court jury awarded $56 million on July 22, 2026 to Malcolm Carnwath, a 78-year-old retired realtor from Newburyport, Massachusetts. An Amazon delivery driver fell asleep and crossed the center line in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Nov. 16, 2024, causing a head-on crash. Mr. Carnwath suffered a cardiac arrest, multiple strokes with permanent brain injury, and a below-knee amputation of his left leg. Amazon accepted liability days before the two-day damages trial.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.