Top Car Accident Personal Injury Settlements

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 the honest frame is that 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 honest frame: 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 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.

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.

A Manhattan jury awarded $72.5 million on February 22, 2024 to Aurora Beauchamp, a stage 4 cancer patient who was struck in a Lower East Side crosswalk by an MTA bus and dragged roughly 20 feet before it came to rest on her legs, crushing her pelvis and paralyzing her left leg, in what was widely reported as potentially the largest pedestrian knockdown verdict against the MTA. The money has not been paid: the transit defendants appealed after judgment was entered in May 2025, the Appellate Division denied the Beauchamps' bid to fast-track the briefing in December 2025, and the appeal remains pending.

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.

A Nueces County jury awarded $67.47 million to Christopher Arnold, paralyzed from the waist down after a Weatherford US oilfield employee rear-ended the vehicle he was riding in on FM 624 near Calallen; a pre-agreed high-low cap limited actual recovery to $9 million.

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.

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.

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.

After a speeding BMW rear-ended a mother and her four children stopped at an Ocala red light, a Marion County jury awarded the family nearly $52 million, reported as the largest verdict in the county's history.

A $45 million payout for 15-year-old Nathen Jones, left unable to walk, speak, or feed himself after Chicago officers chased a car over a minor traffic stop, believed to be the largest the city has ever paid for a police-pursuit crash.

A Broward County jury awarded $43 million to Steadman and Eileen Haase after an 18-year-old drunk driver crossed the median on Rock Island Road in Lauderhill on December 22, 2019, sending his car airborne and crushing the couple's vehicle.

A Limestone County jury awarded $41 million to a married couple who suffered catastrophic injuries when an intoxicated company driver ran a stop sign and struck their pickup truck, holding both the driver and his employer vicariously liable.

A Kings County jury awarded $40,876,000 to Matthew Falcone Jr., who suffered a traumatic brain injury, facial fractures, and permanent left-side paralysis after a Verizon New York truck struck him at a Brooklyn intersection in 2006.