Largest Connecticut Group Settlements and Injury Recovery Funds

On December 14, 2012, a 20-year-old gunman used a Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle made by Remington to kill 20 first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Nine of the victims' families sued Remington in 2014, arguing that its marketing of the AR-15-style rifle to young, violence-prone men was an unfair trade practice that fell outside the federal immunity gun makers enjoy. The Connecticut Supreme Court let that claim proceed in 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene, and after Remington went through bankruptcy twice its four insurers agreed on February 15, 2022 to pay the families the full $73 million available under five policies. Remington also had to release thousands of pages of internal marketing documents.

A Waterbury jury awarded Dominic and Cathy D'Attilo and their son Daniel $58.6 million after finding that obstetrician Richard Viscarello delayed a necessary cesarean section during Daniel's birth, depriving him of oxygen and leaving him with severe cerebral palsy.

A federal jury found that R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company had defectively designed Salem cigarettes and awarded Barbara Izzarelli nearly $8 million; punitive damages and years of accruing interest, upheld on appeal and left standing when the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, eventually brought the total to $52.3 million.

Jennifer Anderson tested positive for high-risk HPV at annual visits with her gynecologist over several years, and no colposcopy was ever performed. By the time her cervical cancer was found in 2019 it had spread to her chest, abdomen, and pelvis. A Stamford jury awarded her $39 million and her husband $10 million.

Ben Crump, with Connecticut co-counsel Louis Rubano and R.J. Weber, secured a $45 million settlement from the City of New Haven for Richard "Randy" Cox, who was left paralyzed from the chest down after being thrown headfirst into the wall of a police transport van while handcuffed. At announcement it was described as the largest settlement ever reached in a U.S. police-misconduct case, surpassing the George Floyd settlement.

A federal jury awarded Cara Munn $41.7 million after she contracted tick-borne encephalitis on a school-sponsored trip to China and lost the ability to speak, and the Connecticut Supreme Court later held that schools can owe students a duty to warn about and protect against insect-borne disease on trips abroad.

A Waterbury jury awarded Don Zemo IV $45 million after finding that a tow truck illegally parked outside MyHoopty.com's Oakville lot blocked the sightline for a car pulling out, causing a collision that left him permanently paralyzed.

On July 26, 2007, a 6-year-old boy drowned in his family's backyard pool in Greenwich when his arm was sucked into a wall drain feeding a spillover spa. Connecticut had required dual drains and a vacuum-release device since 2004, a year before the pool was permitted, and the builder had installed neither. The pool company's president pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide in 2011, the first such prosecution of a pool builder in the country. By May 2013 the parents, Brian and Karen Cohn, had settled with all nine defendants for a combined $40 million, all of it directed to the water-safety foundation they created in their son's name.

Elizabeth Oram delivered twins at Stamford Hospital on April 4, 2003. The first was born healthy at 3:11 a.m. Two minutes later the second twin showed fetal distress from a compressed umbilical cord, but the cesarean was not completed until 3:38 a.m. The boy was born with severe brain damage and cerebral palsy. After a seven-week trial, a Stamford jury found obstetrician Dr. Corinne de Cholnoky liable in February 2008 and awarded $38.5 million, then the largest medical malpractice verdict in Connecticut.

Elizabeth Tigani was 32 when she was admitted to deliver her first child. After nearly a day of labor she had a cesarean section that, her lawyers argued, was both ordered too late and performed negligently, permanently injuring her bladder and uterus. A Stamford jury awarded $30.4 million after an eight-year fight.

A jury in the Stamford-Norwalk Judicial District awarded Mary Margaret Farren $28.6 million after finding that her former husband, David Farren, attacked her with a hammer and a knife during their divorce proceedings, leaving her with severe and permanent injuries.

Evan Plotkin of Somers, Connecticut, was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2021 and sued Johnson & Johnson, alleging decades of exposure to asbestos in its Baby Powder. A Bridgeport jury awarded $15 million in compensatory damages on October 15, 2024, and found the company's conduct warranted punitive damages. On October 1, 2025, the trial judge added $10 million in punitive damages, for a total of $25 million. Johnson & Johnson has appealed.

A Waterbury jury awarded $23.05 million to a Wolcott boy who suffered permanent traumatic brain damage when the school bus he was riding, carrying students with disabilities, struck a tree after its driver swerved to avoid an oncoming car.

E.M. was a boarding student at the Yeshiva of New Haven from 2001 to 2005, and from age 14 to 17 the school's rabbi and chief administrator, Daniel Greer, sexually abused him on a frequent, sometimes weekly basis. In May 2017 a federal jury in Connecticut awarded E.M. $15 million against Greer and the school, and on June 6, 2017 the court entered a $21,749,041.10 judgment after adding $5 million in punitive damages and $1.75 million in offer-of-compromise interest. The Second Circuit affirmed in full on March 3, 2020, rejecting the argument that the award was excessive. Greer was separately convicted and sent to prison; by 2021 less than $240,000 of the judgment had been collected, and E.M.'s collection suits against Greer's real-estate nonprofits were resolved privately in 2024.

Cristina Vomoca, 38, died eight days after a ShopRite tractor-trailer ran a red light in Greenwich and struck her car in 2016. Food Haulers Inc. and its parent Wakefern Food Corp. settled with her estate for $18.75 million in August 2019, roughly a day after a Stamford jury had already been handed the case.

A New Haven jury awarded the estate of Maria Ocasio $15.4 million after finding that an anesthesiologist and nurse anesthetist from Meriden-Wallingford Anesthesia Group failed to recognize and respond to her respiratory collapse during a routine outpatient endoscopy, leading to her death.

A Danbury jury awarded Vivian Gagliano and her husband roughly $12 million after her colon was perforated during hernia repair surgery at Danbury Hospital, and the Connecticut Supreme Court later affirmed the verdict, holding Danbury Hospital vicariously liable for the surgical resident who performed the procedure.

Barbara Lathan, a 65-year-old from the Southport section of Fairfield, Connecticut, walked into Bridgeport Hospital on October 3, 2007 to be treated for a urinary tract infection. Staff overdosed her six times with the blood thinner Lovenox; she bled into her abdomen, went into cardiac arrest, was revived and underwent emergency surgery, then contracted MRSA through a central line in her neck, developed an orange-sized abscess and lost part of her shoulder bone to further surgery. She left 75 days later in a hospital bed and never walked again. In October 2013 a Bridgeport jury deliberated about 90 minutes and awarded her $9,279,884.95, and Bridgeport Hospital's owner publicly apologized to her.

James Griswold, 58, asked the staff at Advanced Cardiovascular Specialists whether their imaging table could hold his 340-pound frame before a nuclear stress test on July 1, 2014. He was told bigger people had used it. The head of the table then dropped to the floor with a loud pop, and the spinal injuries that followed led to three surgeries, a blood clot, a stroke and a brain abscess that left him unable to walk unaided. A Waterbury jury awarded him and his wife $9 million on April 5, 2024, and the court added $5.4 million in interest. The defendants have appealed.

W.S., a profoundly mentally ill man committed to Whiting Forensic Hospital in Middletown, Connecticut since 1995, was kicked, hit, doused with liquids, pelted with food, made to wear a diaper on his head and sexually humiliated by the nurses and aides paid to care for him. Hospital cameras captured more than 50 incidents in 24 days in early 2017. Nearly 40 employees were fired, ten were arrested, nine were convicted and eight went to prison. His brother and conservator sued the state in 2018, and in June 2022, after the legislature signed off, Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis approved a $9 million settlement that his lawyer said was the largest the state had ever paid a single person. The state also waived more than $8 million in custody charges and agreed to keep him under constant video monitoring.

Dr. Jacqueline Satchell, a 51-year-old primary care physician and Yale clinical assistant professor who had cared for New Haven patients for two decades, was admitted to Yale New Haven Hospital's Saint Raphael campus in October 2020 with a perforated bowel. Surgeons removed part of her infected intestine, but over the following days her estate said the signs of a worsening infection and organ dysfunction were overlooked, no specialist consultations or second operation were pursued, and by the time doctors acted she was too sick to save. She died on October 7, 2020. On June 10, 2026, after a multi-week trial, a New Haven jury awarded her estate $7,730,000 against Yale New Haven Hospital and Yale University. Yale said it was disappointed and would evaluate its appellate options.

A Hartford jury returned a $7.25 million verdict for the estate of Daniel DiNardi, a Connecticut DOT supervisor fatally struck by a tractor-trailer while working on the shoulder of Route 8 northbound near Waterbury.

On June 9, 2008, a 5-year-old nonswimmer in an after-school program at the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Waterbury went under in the club's indoor pool while the only lifeguard sat in a deck chair doing paperwork. Her 7-year-old brother tried to pull her out, the lifeguard told him to tug her to the side, and no one performed chest compressions for 11 minutes until paramedics arrived. She was declared brain dead the next day at Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital. On September 18, 2014, after a two-week trial, a Waterbury jury found the club liable and awarded her estate $7.2 million and her mother $90,600 in medical and funeral expenses, part of a $12.3 million total verdict that also compensated her brother.

RisCassi and Davis attorneys secured a $6.5 million settlement for students hurt when a school bus plunged down a 20-foot I-84 embankment, killing a 16-year-old Rocky Hill boy on his way to a robotics competition.