Largest Indiana Personal Injury Verdicts Never Collected

On October 18, 2020 Ryann Early, drunk and doing about 79 mph in a 40 zone, crossed into oncoming traffic on Albert S. White Drive in Whitestown and hit Sherry Schnee head-on. She broke her neck and is quadriplegic. He went to prison. On January 11, 2024 a Boone County jury awarded her $84,000,000 and her husband $75,000,000. Early is an individual with no insurer identified, and his own lawyer said afterward he wished there were actual dollars behind the number.

A Tippecanoe County jury awarded $157 million to the widow of Timothy Simonton, a 42-year-old Indiana man who died in October 2005 after the locking pins on an Ol' Man tree stand failed and left him hanging from a tree during a deer-scouting outing.

CohenMalad recovered $66.5 million on behalf of 262 patients who alleged that Dr. Arvind Gandhi and Cardiology Associates of Northwest Indiana implanted pacemakers and defibrillators and performed open-heart surgeries that were never medically necessary.

In early 2014, Biomet agreed to pay at least $56 million to settle about 1,000 federal lawsuits over its M2a 38 and M2a Magnum metal-on-metal hip implants, consolidated in the Northern District of Indiana. Qualifying patients who had the device revised received a base award of $200,000, adjusted by individual factors. Thomas Anapol was court-appointed Co-Lead Counsel with W. Mark Lanier and signed the agreement for the Plaintiffs' Executive Committee. The figure covers many unrelated plaintiffs, is a reported minimum rather than a final total, and is not itemized by person.

CohenMalad partner David Cutshaw co-led a $55 million Indiana Patient's Compensation Fund settlement for 282 patients who underwent unnecessary or damaging sinus surgeries performed by Dr. Mark Weinberger, a Merrillville ENT who later fled the country and was found hiding in the Italian Alps.

A Marion County jury in March 2024 awarded $60.7 million to motorcyclist Christopher Dugan after a Tesla service manager crossed double yellow lines and struck him, leaving him with a permanent traumatic brain injury and a partial foot amputation; comparative fault reduced the net award to $42.5 million.

A Lake County jury awarded Kristen Zak $32.5 million after a J.B. Hunt Transport semi-truck jackknifed in the median of Interstate 65 during a snowstorm and was left without warning triangles, and the car she was riding in struck the wreck about an hour later, leaving her with permanent brain damage.

On the morning of March 11, 2001, three brothers went through the ice on Lake Holiday inside the Lakes of the Four Seasons, a gated condominium community in Crown Point, Indiana. One 11-year-old drowned, his 10-year-old brother was pulled out with a traumatic brain injury, and the third boy, the drowned child's twin, was rescued by a diver. At trial in February 2011 the family's lawyers showed that an overflow crib circulating water beneath the surface had thinned the ice at that spot while staying invisible from shore, and that the property owners association had posted no warning sign, put up no barrier and kept no rescue equipment at the lake. A Lake Circuit Court jury assigned all of the fault to the association and awarded $30.7 million, itemized as $25.5 million for the brain injury, $5 million for the death and $200,000 for the surviving twin. A news report at the time said an appeal was expected, and no published Indiana appellate decision in the case has since turned up.

Daniel Nelson, a farmer from Lake Village, Indiana, was driving his tractor north on U.S. 41 in Newton County on the morning of May 16, 2019, when a semitrailer that failed to slow down or change lanes struck it and threw him from the seat. He suffered head and brain injuries, a fractured pelvis and five broken ribs. Nelson and his wife, Diana, sued the trucking company, its customer and the driver, and after the case bounced between federal and state court on jurisdictional grounds, it was tried over seven days in Newton County Superior Court. On February 16, 2022, the jury deliberated about two and a half hours before awarding $25 million to Daniel Nelson and $5 million to Diana Nelson, a $30 million verdict that stood.

A Lake County jury awarded $25 million to Patricia Amsden after her husband Phillip was struck and killed on Interstate 65 by a driver with a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit, holding the driver, his employer, and two bars that served him accountable.

Electrician Ralph Parker was paralyzed from the chest down in April 2006 when an overhead garage door at an Indianapolis warehouse activated and pinned him against a beam. A Marion County jury found Professional Garage Door Systems 70 percent at fault for servicing the door a week earlier. The jury's awards of $26 million to Parker and $4.5 million to his wife were reduced by his share of fault, leaving $21.3 million.

A federal jury in Hammond, Indiana found that Ethicon's Prolift transvaginal mesh was defectively designed and inadequately warned against, awarding Barbara and Anton Kaiser $35 million. A judge reduced the punitive damages, leaving a $20 million verdict that the Seventh Circuit affirmed in full in 2020.

After a neurosurgeon slipped on a wet hospital pantry floor and developed reflex sympathetic dystrophy that ended his surgical career, an Evansville jury found St. Mary's Medical Center fully at fault and awarded $16.95 million, a verdict the Indiana Court of Appeals later affirmed.

A Marion County jury returned a $20 million verdict, $12.2 million net after fault, for a union carpenter left permanently disabled after Indianapolis Power and Light issued a faulty dig permit that failed to account for a live 4,160-volt electrical line at its Petersburg power plant.

Joshua McLemore, 29, died on August 10, 2021, after 20 days locked alone in a padded isolation cell at the Jackson County Jail in Brownstown, Indiana, where he had been booked during a psychotic episode linked to untreated schizophrenia. He lost about 45 pounds and, according to the federal complaint, slept roughly 15 hours in total over those three weeks before jail staff sent him to a hospital; he was transferred to a Cincinnati hospital and died there of multiple organ failure. His aunt sued Jackson County, the sheriff and jail staff in federal court on behalf of his estate, and in December 2023 the county's $7.25 million settlement was made public, reported as the largest known payout over a jail death in Indiana. Separate claims against the jail's outsourced medical provider were not part of that settlement.

A tractor-trailer going about 50 mph rear-ended the Whiting family's car at a red light, leaving Harold Whiting with permanent brain damage and a spinal cord injury. The defendants conceded negligence, and a federal jury in Hammond awarded Harold $6 million, his wife Leatrice $1.22 million for loss of consortium and their daughter $80,000. The Seventh Circuit later affirmed the denial of a new trial.

Jackson County, Indiana agreed to pay $5.6 million to the family of Ta'Neasha Chappell, a 23-year-old Louisville mother who died in jail custody in July 2021 after nearly 20 hours of ignored medical pleas.

A federal jury in Indianapolis awarded $5.6 million to Ronald Hargis and his wife, Amy, after Ronald lost four fingers and underwent a dozen surgeries when his left hand was drawn into the intake rollers of a conveyor at Flutes Inc. The jury found the conveyor's designer, AJ Engineering, liable for leaving the rollers unguarded. The trial court denied the company's post-trial motions in August 2012.

A Porter County jury awarded Courtney Faulhaber $4.1 million after a B&W Cartage Company semi-truck ran a red light on U.S. 6 in June 2020 and struck her car. The company did not dispute that its driver caused the crash, so the trial turned entirely on how badly Faulhaber was hurt. The defense argued her head injury was a temporary concussive event and pointed to how little treatment her medical records showed, while her lawyers argued the collision left her with a lasting brain injury. The jury found for Faulhaber and awarded her $4.1 million, and it rejected a companion loss of consortium claim brought by her husband.

A 17-year-old Indianapolis cyclist was hit and then run over a second time by a Durham School Services bus, leaving him with a fractured ankle and spine, a lacerated spleen and a degloving foot injury. A Marion County jury in October 2012 found total damages of $5.2 million and assigned him 25 percent of the fault, producing a judgment of about $3.9 million. The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed in 2014.

Gladys Whitfield called 911 on April 25, 2022 asking for help for her son, who was experiencing a mental health crisis. Six Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers responded. Herman Whitfield III was tased and restrained face down until he stopped responding. He was pronounced dead at a hospital within the hour. The coroner ruled it a homicide.

An Allen County jury awarded a Fort Wayne woman $2,670,000 after finding that Dr. Shashi Ahuja mishandled a relatively new medical device during a procedure and left a polymer fragment in an artery in her right leg, leaving her with a disfigured and largely unusable lower leg.

A Tippecanoe County jury found in February 2016 that Brittany Johnson had $7.1 million in damages from a 2008 crash on Interstate 65 that killed her fiance and left her with a traumatic brain injury. It assigned 30 percent of the fault to Sandberg Trucking and its driver, Kimiel Horn, which produced a $2.13 million judgment. The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed in 2017.

A Morgan County jury awarded $1,250,075 to a plumbing contractor who suffered severe burns after a Carmel High School maintenance employee ignited a pool heater's pilot light over the contractor's explicit objection, triggering a gas explosion that blew the roof off the building.