Top Individual Kansas Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements

Scott Powell of Hare Wynn Newell and Newton served as one of four co-lead class counsel in the $1.51 billion nationwide settlement against Syngenta, recovering losses for hundreds of thousands of U.S. corn growers, grain handlers, and ethanol producers whose market access to China was cut off after the company prematurely commercialized an unapproved GMO corn trait.

Gray Ritter Graham attorney Don Downing served as one of four court-appointed national co-lead counsel in the Syngenta MIR162 MDL, securing a $217.7 million Kansas jury verdict in 2017 and a $1.51 billion class action settlement in 2018 for more than 600,000 U.S. corn farmers, grain handlers, and ethanol producers.

Scott Powell of Hare Wynn Newell and Newton served as co-lead class counsel when a Kansas federal jury returned a $217.7 million compensatory verdict against Syngenta, finding the seed company negligent for commercializing its MIR162 GMO corn trait in the United States before China approved it for import, triggering a market collapse that cut off American farmers from one of their largest export buyers.

The Popham Law Firm secured a $57 million settlement on behalf of more than 1,700 Sprint employees who alleged the company's automated performance system unlawfully targeted workers over 40 during a series of mass layoffs -- at the time the largest ADEA class settlement in the District of Kansas.

A federal jury in Wichita awarded $23.5 million to a Yellow Freight co-driver left with debilitating injuries after a Swift Transportation driver, impaired by methamphetamine, backed her rig from a rest stop onto U.S. Highway 54 in New Mexico.

A federal jury in Wichita awarded $15 million to a couple whose infant daughter was left with permanent brain damage after Wyeth's DPT vaccine, a 1987 verdict the Tenth Circuit later reversed and sent back for a new trial.

A Kansas federal jury awarded $15 million to the family of an infant who suffered severe brain damage after receiving Wyeth's whole-cell DTP vaccine, one of the largest vaccine-injury verdicts of the era.

After United States Aircraft Insurance Group sat on a $100,000 voluntary-settlement offer for more than a year following a fatal 2013 Kansas plane crash, a Riley County judge held the insurer responsible for the entire $11.5 million wrongful-death judgment entered against its insured.

A Wichita jury awarded $11.5 million against International Playtex after finding its super-absorbent tampons caused the toxic shock syndrome death of a 21-year-old Kansas woman, with the full $10 million punitive award later reinstated by the Tenth Circuit.

A Kansas jury awarded $6.5 million after finding Subaru liable for a roof crush defect that left a young man a quadriplegic in a rollover crash, and the Tenth Circuit affirmed the full judgment in a published 1996 opinion.

A Johnson County jury awarded $5.7 million to the family of Kim Yates, a 49-year-old woman who died by suicide three days after AdventHealth Shawnee Mission discharged her despite an initial triage assessment flagging her as high risk, in what records show is the largest wrongful death or medical malpractice verdict in Johnson County history.

A Sedgwick County jury awarded $1.7 million to a Wichita motorcyclist who struck city-installed bollards blocking an intersection that still showed a green traffic light, finding the City of Wichita negligent for shifting road-closure safety duties onto private applicants instead of its own traffic engineers.

A Johnson County jury returned the largest medical-malpractice verdict in the county in more than 25 years after finding a pain clinic and its physician responsible for a spinal MRSA infection that destroyed a patient's quality of life.

Victor Bergman won a $1.215 million jury verdict for sprint car driver Doug Wolfgang, who suffered severe burns after track operators at Lakeside Speedway left him trapped in a burning cockpit for eight to ten minutes with only two undertrained firefighters on site.

A rear-end collision by a teen driver near Leawood, Kansas aggravated the plaintiff's pre-existing neck condition and required surgery; after the court struck the defense liability expert one week before trial, the case settled for $600,000.