Largest Florida Personal Injury Recoveries Confirmed Paid
Personal injury results in Florida 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 Florida →- $60 millionVerdictPaidProduct Liability
$60 Million Verdict Over Fatal Gas Tank Fire
A Broward County jury awarded Robert and Connie McGee and their daughter $60 million in 1998 after the fuel tank of the station wagon they were riding in was punctured and exploded in a low speed collision, killing the couple's 13 year old son and severely burning the three of them. General Motors defended the tank as safe. The jury found the automaker liable for the burns caused by the fire and declined to award punitive damages. A trial court setoff briefly cut the family's recovery to about $33 million for the fault the jury assigned to the driver whose trailer broke loose, but Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal vacated that reduction, holding that comparative fault does not reduce damages for the enhanced injuries caused by a defective fuel tank, and the full verdict was entered by amended final judgment in 2003. A second appeal, decided in 2004, confirmed that interest runs from the May 18, 1998 verdict date.
After trial: Affirmed and paid. The Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed the award on December 18, 2002 and vacated a trial court reduction to about $33 million, and an amended final judgment for the full $60 million was entered May 6, 2003.
Kelley | Uustal Trial Attorneys1998 · Circuit Court for the 17th Judicial Circuit, Broward County, Florida (affirmed, Fourth District Court of Appeal)Read the full story → - $11 millionVerdictPaidProduct Liability
Jacksonville Jury Awards $11 Million to Smoker Who Needed Two Lung Transplants
A Duval County, Florida jury awarded longtime smoker Elaine Jordan $11 million in August 2015, finding that Philip Morris USA concealed the dangers and addictive nature of cigarettes and that the resulting chronic obstructive pulmonary disease led to her two lung transplants and a later kidney transplant. The verdict included $7,795,000 in compensatory damages and $3,205,000 in punitive damages. Jurors also found Philip Morris 60 percent at fault and Jordan 40 percent at fault. Philip Morris appealed and lost at every stage: Florida's First District Court of Appeal affirmed in April 2018, the United States Supreme Court denied review in February 2019, and a later appeal of the attorney fee award Jordan won failed as well. The $11 million stands as rendered in 2015.
After trial: Affirmed and paid. The First District Court of Appeal affirmed on April 3, 2018, rehearing was denied, and the U.S.
115 results, largest first
A Pensacola jury awarded Cynthia Robinson $23.6 billion in punitive damages against R.J. Reynolds over the 1996 lung cancer death of her 36-year-old husband, the largest single-plaintiff award of Florida's Engle tobacco litigation, but the trial judge called the number constitutionally excessive, an appeals court ordered a full retrial over improper closing arguments, and a second jury returned a complete defense verdict in 2019, so the estate ultimately collected nothing.
C. Steven Yerrid, the youngest of Florida's 11-lawyer 'Dream Team,' added racketeering and conspiracy charges that tripled the damages ceiling, helping the state secure what was then the largest civil settlement in American history against the tobacco industry.
Court-appointed Chair Lead Counsel Peter Prieto of Podhurst Orseck coordinated the nation's largest automotive defect MDL, securing more than $1.5 billion in settlements from seven automakers for tens of millions of vehicle owners harmed by defective Takata airbag inflators.
A Polk County jury awarded $110 million in compensatory damages and $1 billion in punitive damages over the death of 69-year-old Arlene Townsend, who fell 17 times at the Auburndale Oaks Healthcare Center, in a Wilkes & McHugh case against Trans Healthcare entities that had defaulted, stopped defending, and were already insolvent and in receivership, which is why the judgment was largely symbolic and the estate ultimately recovered only a small share of a later multi-estate settlement.
The families of 98 people killed in the June 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside, Florida, recovered over $1 billion through a class settlement run by a court-appointed Plaintiffs' Steering Committee, with final approval reached in under a year.
A Nassau County jury found two trucking companies responsible for the 2017 chain-reaction crash on I-95 near Yulee that killed 18-year-old Connor Dzion, returning a $1 billion verdict that Curry Pajcic won for the teen's parents.
A Gainesville jury awarded $900 million, including $700 million in punitive damages, to stroke survivor Joseph Webb over neglect at the University Place Care and Rehabilitation Center, in a Wilkes & McHugh case tried against defaulted Trans Healthcare entities with no defense present, but Florida's First District Court of Appeal reversed the judgment in 2013 because the trial court had refused to let a defense lawyer appear, and the money was never collected; the estate's claim was later resolved for a small share of a multi-estate bankruptcy settlement.
Steven Marks and Kristina Infante of Podhurst Orseck secured a combined $844 million in wrongful-death judgments for 43 families of passengers killed when LaMia Flight 2933 crashed near Medellin, Colombia, in November 2016, killing 71 of the 77 people aboard.
Lewis Butler, a security guard, was shot eight times and killed in November 2023 during an armed robbery at an internet cafe in Havana, Florida. The cafe's operators had not reported a robbery three weeks earlier in which the gun used against him was stolen. In December 2025 a Gadsden County jury awarded his widow $779,389,024, including $550 million for pain and suffering and $225 million for loss of companionship.
A jury found the owners of the Park Social bar liable for a 2017 staircase fall that left a 57-year-old patron a partial quadriplegic, returning a $644,751,855 premises-liability verdict that the defendants have appealed to Florida's Sixth District Court of Appeal.
A Miami federal court entered a roughly $440 million judgment against Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, and MSC for using port terminals Cuba confiscated in 1960, a result the Supreme Court reinstated by a vote of 8 to 1 in 2026.
A Leon County jury awarded $411,726,608 to Duane Washington, a career Army sergeant left partially paralyzed in a 45-vehicle pileup on Interstate 10 near Tallahassee, in the Second Judicial Circuit's first virtual jury trial. Ben Crump tried the damages case with co-counsel Robert Cox. Liability was entered by default after defendant Top Auto Express stopped responding in the litigation, its lawyer withdrew months before trial, the one-truck Pembroke Pines carrier sat out the Zoom trial undefended, and industry observers called the record number essentially uncollectable beyond the roughly $1 million in insurance that was offered and rejected before trial.
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.
A Hernando County jury returned a $330 million verdict for Angela Stone after a drunk driver ran a stop sign and fatally struck a minivan carrying her 13-year-old daughter.
An Orange County jury awarded $310 million to the parents of Tyre Sampson, the 14-year-old who fell to his death from the Orlando FreeFall drop tower at ICON Park in 2022, in a case tried by Kimberly Wald and Michael Haggard against ride manufacturer Funtime Handels GmbH, which sent no lawyer or representative to the trial, leaving collection of the judgment from the absent Austrian company uncertain.
Steven Marks of Podhurst Orseck served as lead liaison counsel for the state-court plaintiffs and on the federal MDL Plaintiffs' Steering Committee, helping recover more than $262 million across insurance settlements for the families of the 110 people killed in the May 1996 crash.
On November 9, 2023, a Sarasota County jury awarded the Kowalski family more than $261 million against Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital: about $211.5 million in compensatory damages plus $50 million in punitive damages, in the case behind the Netflix documentary Take Care of Maya. None of that judgment stands today. The trial judge cut $47.5 million from the award in January 2024, and on October 29, 2025 Florida's Second District Court of Appeal reversed the judgment entirely, holding that the trial court misapplied the statutory immunity for good-faith child-abuse reporting, directing judgment for the hospital on several claims and ordering a new trial on the rest. In August 2026 the Florida Supreme Court declined to review that ruling, so the surviving claims head back to Sarasota County for a narrower retrial. AndersonGlenn tried the original case for the family, and this page documents the full arc, verdict and reversal alike.
A Miami federal jury found Tesla 33% liable for a 2019 Key Largo crash that killed a 22-year-old woman and severely injured her boyfriend, awarding $243 million including $200 million in punitive damages in the first federal trial over a fatal Autopilot accident.
A Hillsborough County jury awarded $216.8 million to Allan Navarro after an emergency room misdiagnosed his stroke as sinusitis, leaving him permanently paralyzed. It was the largest medical malpractice verdict in Florida history at the time.
A Pinellas County civil jury found Rebecca Schwartz liable for the 2014 murder of her husband, kidney specialist Dr. Steven Schwartz, and awarded his three children $200 million in one of the largest wrongful death verdicts in Florida history.
A Pinellas County jury awarded $60 million in compensatory and $140 million in punitive damages over the death of 92-year-old Elvira Nunziata, who tumbled down a stairwell still strapped in her wheelchair at the Pinellas Park Care and Rehab Center, in a Wilkes & McHugh case where the defunct operator Trans Health Management presented no defense at all, meaning the record-setting sum was symbolic from the start; the estate later recovered only a share of a modest multi-estate bankruptcy settlement.
After Cuban MiG fighters shot down two unarmed Brothers to the Rescue planes on February 24, 1996, killing four men, the families of three of the victims won a default judgment in Miami federal court. Judge James Lawrence King awarded $49.9 million in compensatory damages against Cuba and the Cuban Air Force and $137.7 million in punitive damages against the Air Force alone. The figure is a group result covering three families' separately itemized awards. The judgment stood, and about $93 million was later collected from frozen Cuban assets.
A Nassau County jury awarded $141.5 million, including $125 million in punitive damages, against K&N Logging after an unvetted driver's 80,000-pound log truck plowed into stopped school-zone traffic and left a young child with permanent brain damage.
Stuart Grossman, Neal Roth, and Alex Arteaga-Gomez of Grossman Roth Yaffa Cohen represented families in the $127.5 million federal settlement arising from the FBI's failure to follow up on a tip warning that Nikolas Cruz was planning a school shooting five weeks before the February 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas massacre.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.