Largest Georgia Personal Injury Verdicts Never Collected

A federal jury in Columbus, Georgia awarded $30.5 million in compensatory damages and $2.5 billion in punitive damages against Ford Motor Company for the deaths of Herman and Debra Mills, killed when the roof of their 2015 F-250 Super Duty crushed down on them in a rollover. Butler Prather LLP tried the case, with James E. Butler Jr., Ramsey Prather, Daniel Philyaw, and Allison Bailey on the trial team. The honest frame: Ford called the verdict impermissibly extreme, moved for a new trial, and in September 2025 settled this case and the related $1.7 billion Hill case on confidential terms, so the verdict was never collected as awarded.

A Cobb County, Georgia jury found that Monsanto's Roundup caused John Barnes's non-Hodgkin lymphoma and awarded him $2.065 billion, with Arnold & Itkin's Kyle Findley serving as lead trial lawyer.

A Gwinnett County jury awarded roughly $24 million in compensatory damages and $1.7 billion in punitive damages against Ford Motor Company for the 2014 rollover deaths of Melvin and Voncile Hill in a 2002 F-250, with James E. Butler Jr. of Butler Prather LLP as lead trial counsel; the Georgia Court of Appeals vacated the judgment in November 2024 and ordered a new trial, and Ford settled the case on confidential terms in September 2025 before a third trial could begin.

A Clayton County jury awarded $1 billion to a woman who was raped at age 14 by an armed security guard her employer hired without verifying he was licensed to carry a weapon.

John Foy & Associates was one of about a dozen co-counsel firms in the $162 million settlement for victims of a 2021 I-85 van rollover and fire in Gwinnett County that killed seven women from a sober living home.

A DeKalb County jury awarded $160 million to the families of Ewell Ynoa and Giovan Diaz, two young men shot and killed at a 2017 rap concert at the Masquerade venue in Underground Atlanta, finding Sony Music Holdings failed to protect patrons at the show.

A DeKalb County State Court jury awarded $140 million on December 20, 2023 to the estate of George Hughes, a 63-year-old tenant who burned to death in a March 2017 fire at the Venetian Hills Apartments in southwest Atlanta, finding the landlord's fire safety failures caused his death, but the judgment did not stand: on October 31, 2025 the Georgia Court of Appeals vacated it, holding that the jury was wrongly instructed under general premises liability law in addition to Georgia's narrower landlord-tenant statute, and the case was remanded for a full retrial that remains pending.

A Bibb County State Court jury awarded $118 million, including $90 million in punitive damages, to Joseph Cason Jr. and his mother Betty Gill after surveillance video showed care home employees striking the severely disabled man at least 69 times. The December 2022 verdict against the Total Care defendants was the largest in the court's history.

A federal jury in Atlanta awarded $100 million to Jerry Blasingame, a 65-year-old man rendered quadriplegic after an Atlanta police officer tased him without warning during a foot pursuit, though the award was ultimately reduced to $21 million following post-trial rulings and a 2026 Eleventh Circuit decision.

A DeKalb County jury awarded more than $77.5 million to the family of Nicholas Carusillo, a 29-year-old with bipolar disorder who was taken off lithium at Metro Atlanta Recovery Residences over his providers' objections, discharged over a phone rule violation, and killed on Interstate 85 less than three days later. MARR appealed in May 2024, and the case settled confidentially in 2025 after the Georgia Court of Appeals remanded it for settlement approval.

A Fulton County State Court jury awarded $75 million to Jonathan Buckelew, who suffered a brain stem stroke after a chiropractic neck adjustment at age 32 and was left with locked-in syndrome when an emergency physician and a radiologist failed to diagnose it for a full day. The Georgia Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in March 2025.

A Fulton County State Court jury awarded $75 million to Jonathan Buckelew, who suffered a brain stem stroke after a chiropractic neck adjustment at age 32 and was left with locked-in syndrome when an emergency physician and a radiologist failed to diagnose it for a full day. The Georgia Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in March 2025.

On July 18, 2016, a Schnitzer Southeast tractor-trailer crossed the center line of U.S. Highway 80 in Russell County, Alabama, and killed five members of one family in a head-on collision, including Judy Madere, 58. A Muscogee County State Court jury in Columbus, Georgia found Schnitzer Southeast and its parent, Schnitzer Steel Industries, liable and returned a $280,065,000 verdict for Madere's death on August 23, 2019, reported at the time as the largest wrongful death verdict against a trucking company. Schnitzer said it would appeal, but instead of litigating the verdict, it resolved Madere's suit together with her twin sister Trudy Hebert's separate, still pending suit from the same crash for a combined $68 million in the following fiscal quarter, according to Schnitzer's SEC filings. Three earlier suits from the same crash, brought by the estates of the two children and their mother, had already settled for $35 million combined. The individual amounts within the $68 million settlement are not public.

On April 12, 2013, Micah Andrews, 38, died on Interstate 575 north of Atlanta when he swerved to miss a snapping turtle in the road, ran off the shoulder into trees at about 35 miles an hour, and was killed inside a crash he should have survived: his airbag did not deploy and his Autoliv designed seatbelt spooled out about 20 inches of webbing, letting his face hit the steering wheel hub hard enough to fracture the base of his skull. His widow, Jamie Andrews, sued Autoliv and Mazda in 2014, Mazda settled its own part of the case confidentially in June 2016, and Jim Butler of Butler Prather LLP tried the case with co counsel to a bench verdict before U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones, who found the seatbelt defectively designed and entered a $127,019,343.40 judgment at the end of December 2021, including $100 million in punitive damages. Autoliv appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, arguing the punitive award was excessive under Georgia law, then abandoned that appeal and paid $56 million to close the case on July 27, 2023, of which $42 million went to Jamie Andrews and $14 million went to the State of Georgia, which had claimed a share of the punitive award.

A Schneider National Carriers truck driver who had gone roughly 22 hours without consistent sleep swerved across multiple lanes of Interstate 285 in Atlanta before dawn on August 17, 2017, forcing a pickup into the left lane and onto the emergency lane, where it struck and killed Jarvis Nance Sr., a 35-year-old owner-operator standing beside his own disabled tractor. Nance's widow sued Schneider and the driver in Cherokee County State Court, and on June 7, 2024, after a five-day trial, the jury awarded $47 million in compensatory damages and assigned 100 percent of the fault to the defendants. Schneider has appealed to the Georgia Court of Appeals, which heard oral argument in June 2026 on a cross-examination ruling, the jury instructions, and closing argument conduct. No decision has issued.

Jeb Butler and Matt Kahn, alongside co-counsel, secured a $40 million settlement against GDOT, a fence contractor, and a construction management firm after a guardrail left in disrepair for months on I-85 contributed to the death of Catrice Hunter.

A DeKalb County jury awarded $40 million to Jessica Mundy and her husband after her 2004 Ford Explorer spontaneously shifted from park into reverse, striking and running over her, after the trial team showed Ford had known about the 'false park' transmission defect for decades.

A Fulton County jury awarded $35 million to the family of Joshua Chang, a 21-year-old Yale student killed when his car struck a concrete planter on the shoulder of Batesville Road, finding the City of Milton 93% responsible for leaving a dangerous obstacle in the right-of-way.

A Bibb County jury awarded $33,465,176 in July 2024 after finding that physicians affiliated with an OB-GYN practice in Macon, Georgia failed to diagnose and treat a bowel perforation that occurred during April Clark's May 2019 ovarian cyst surgery, a failure the family said led to her death that June. The trial court later cut the wrongful death portion of the verdict from $29,250,000 to $350,000 under Georgia's medical malpractice damages cap. On June 16, 2026, the Georgia Supreme Court vacated that reduction, holding the cap cannot apply to a verdict that includes pain and suffering damages protected by the state's constitutional right to a jury trial, which restored the verdict to its full $33,465,176. The Court also sent the case back to the trial court to decide one argument from the defendants' motion for a new trial that the trial court had never reached, so the case is not over.

The widow and four daughters of Christopher Crump, a 32-year-old Army veteran, received $32.5 million after his car became trapped under a Tyson Foods tractor-trailer with defective lighting in the pre-dawn darkness, a result reported as Georgia's largest single-plaintiff pre-trial wrongful death settlement at the time.

A Gwinnett County jury awarded $30.5 million in November 2016 after finding that Gwinnett Medical Center and an attending physician failed to act on an ultrasound showing abnormal fetal blood flow at 35 weeks, delaying an emergency C-section long enough to deprive a newborn of oxygen and cause permanent spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy.

A Henry County jury awarded $29.4 million against PeachState Hospitality after one of its housekeepers, hired without a background check despite a prior statutory rape charge, used a master key to repeatedly assault a 13-year-old girl staying at the company's Residence Inn in McDonough, Georgia.

Cindy Tran Huynh, a 22-year-old Army veteran riding her motorcycle through a green light in Columbus, Georgia, was killed on January 26, 2017 when a tractor-trailer driven by George Hooks for MDV SpartanNash turned left across her path. Hooks and MDV SpartanNash admitted the crash was entirely the driver's fault before trial, leaving a Muscogee County State Court jury to decide damages alone. On March 20, 2019, the jury awarded $27 million: $22 million for the full value of Huynh's life and $5 million for the pain and suffering she endured before she died. Alan Hamilton and Jeff Shiver of Shiver Hamilton represented the family, with Margaret Randels of the firm and Jim Roth of the Roth Firm also on the trial team.

A Bibb County jury returned a $25 million verdict against two OB-GYNs who failed to diagnose and manage severe preeclampsia, resulting in a stillbirth in 2017.