Class Action Verdicts and Settlements

As court-appointed co-lead plaintiffs' counsel in AFFF MDL 2873, Paul J. Napoli of Napoli Shkolnik negotiated a settlement requiring 3M Company to pay up to $12.5 billion to public water systems contaminated by PFAS compounds in firefighting foam, the largest drinking-water settlement in American legal history.

A Jefferson County bench trial ended in a $2.88 billion judgment against former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy for orchestrating an accounting fraud that inflated the company's reported earnings by $2.6 billion over six years.

Aaron Podhurst served on the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee in the 13-year antitrust class action against the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, which ended in a $2.8 billion settlement for more than 3.3 million healthcare providers.

Cohen & Malad attorneys Irwin Levin and Richard Shevitz served on the court-appointed plaintiffs executive committee that negotiated a $1.25 billion class action settlement with Credit Suisse, UBS, and Swiss Bank Corporation on behalf of Holocaust survivors and their heirs.

As court-appointed co-lead counsel in AFFF MDL 2873, Paul J. Napoli of Napoli Shkolnik helped negotiate a $1.185 billion class settlement with DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva to compensate public water systems across the United States for PFAS contamination tied to firefighting foam.

Hunter Shkolnik of Napoli Shkolnik represented Nassau County in negotiations that produced a $1.1 billion settlement with McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen, the three largest prescription drug distributors in the United States.

Steven Marks and Ricardo Martinez-Cid of Podhurst Orseck served on the NFL Concussion Litigation Plaintiffs' Executive Committee, helping negotiate an uncapped settlement projected to exceed $1 billion for more than 20,000 retired players suffering traumatic brain injuries.

Monsanto and its chemical spinoff Solutia agreed in August 2003 to pay $700 million to resolve claims from more than 21,000 Anniston, Alabama residents who were exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls the company manufactured and dumped near their homes for nearly four decades.

Aaron Podhurst served as lead class counsel in a $410 million settlement resolving claims that Bank of America systematically manipulated the order of debit card transactions to drive up overdraft fees charged to more than 13 million customers.

Thornton Law Firm served as liaison counsel on a multi-firm team that secured a $300 million class settlement from State Street Bank on behalf of pension funds and other institutional custodial clients who were secretly overcharged on foreign currency exchange trades for more than a decade.

Beasley Allen, representing Alabama on contingency, secured $220 million from opioid distributors Cardinal Health and Cencora after roughly 18 months of litigation, with every dollar directed to statewide opioid abatement programs.

Morgan & Morgan's John Yanchunis served as court-appointed co-lead counsel in the multidistrict litigation over Capital One's 2019 data breach, which exposed the personal information of roughly 98 million U.S. customers. The $190 million settlement won final approval in 2022 as one of the largest data breach recoveries in U.S. history.

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.

Hare Wynn secured a $100 million cash settlement from UBS on behalf of HealthSouth derivative stockholder plaintiffs, resolving claims that the investment bank aided and abetted one of the largest accounting frauds in American corporate history.

Colson Hicks Eidson served as co-counsel to a class of Jewish families and helped reach a roughly $100 million settlement with Service Corporation International after workers at two South Florida Menorah Gardens cemeteries buried people in the wrong graves and discarded scattered remains.

Gallagher & Kennedy's Kevin Neal and Kenneth Ralston served as Arizona's outside counsel and secured an $85 million settlement from Google over the deceptive collection of smartphone users' location data.

Peter Merrigan of Sweeney Merrigan Personal Injury Lawyers represented 125 Massachusetts cities and towns in claims against Johnson and Johnson and the three largest opioid distributors, recovering $84.1 million in aggregate from the national opioid settlements.

Cohen & Malad's Irwin Levin secured a $62 million class action settlement in 2017 after proving the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles had knowingly overcharged 5.5 million drivers across more than 100 fee categories for over a decade.

M. Anderson Berry of Arnold Law Firm was among plaintiffs' counsel in a $60 million class action settlement against Morgan Stanley Smith Barney arising from two separate failures to secure customer data on decommissioned IT equipment, affecting approximately 15 million current and former clients.

Irwin Levin of CohenMalad served as court-appointed co-lead class counsel in a multidistrict antitrust case against seven central Indiana ready-mixed concrete companies, securing approximately $59 million in combined settlements for construction-industry buyers who paid inflated prices during a four-year price-fixing conspiracy.

William Sieben of Schwebel, Goetz & Sieben co-led a class of approximately 100,000 current and former Minnesota Walmart employees whose wage-and-hour claims resulted in a $54.25 million settlement after a judge found more than two million violations of state labor law.

Roughly 700,000 Texas auto insurance policyholders shared a $52 million class settlement after a federal lawsuit showed Farmers Group charged long-term customers higher premiums than new customers for coverage that was functionally identical.

Gayle Blatt of CaseyGerry served as court-appointed co-lead counsel in a multidistrict proceeding against 23andMe, securing a $46.75 million settlement for approximately 6.9 million customers whose genetic ancestry profiles and personal data were stolen in a 2023 credential-stuffing attack.

Geoff McDonald and co-counsel represented roughly 7,600 universal life policyholders hit with steep cost-of-insurance increases by Banner Life and William Penn, securing a $22.5 million cash fund inside a settlement the court valued at more than $40 million.