Largest Kansas Personal Injury 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.

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 Kansas found obstetrician Dr. Nasreen Shah 90 percent at fault, and Central Kansas Medical Center of Larned 10 percent at fault, for the brain injury a second-born twin suffered at delivery in December 1984. The jury returned its verdict on November 15, 1990. Total damages exceeded $23 million, and judgment was entered against Dr. Shah for her share, $21,244,824.90. The Tenth Circuit affirmed the judgment in 1993.

Kara Hansen was a 16-year-old Riverton, Kansas high school student when Corbin Hamilton rear-ended her 1966 Ford Mustang in Cherokee County on April 9, 2014, breaking her neck and leaving her paralyzed from the chest down. After a five-day trial in Cherokee County District Court, a jury found Hamilton fully at fault and awarded Hansen $38.5 million, including $18 million for future medical and life-care costs and $18 million in noneconomic damages. Kansas's statutory cap on noneconomic damages, which applied to claims arising before July 1, 2014 and was not struck down until more than a year after this trial, held that portion of the award to $250,000, putting the judgment that could be entered at roughly $20.75 million. Hamilton carried only a small liability insurance policy, leaving full recovery in doubt.

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.

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.

Kathryn Gant died at the scene of a head-on crash on K-58 in Kansas on June 10, 2011, after a driver crossed the center line in a no-passing zone. Her husband sued the driver, the driver's parents and the family oil company. After a five-day bench trial in June 2015, a Coffey County judge found all of them liable and awarded $6,723,021. Under a pretrial agreement, none of the judgment could be collected from the defendants themselves.

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.

A 16-year-old driver stopped at a stop sign on Eisenhower Road in Leavenworth County, Kansas, then pulled into the path of a woman driving 55 mph on the right-of-way road, causing a July 2022 collision. She suffered a concussion, and daily headaches, dizziness, balance deficits and diminished concentration persisted for months despite a negative scan taken the day of the crash, which also exacerbated orthopedic injuries from a prior accident. The suit named the teen driver for failing to yield and the driver's mother for negligent supervision and training. A demand for the defendant's policy limits was made during litigation and accepted, and the case settled in September 2024 for $1.25 million without reaching trial.

A 13-year-old girl in Kansas foster care was sexually assaulted in 2018 while left unattended in the office of state contractor KVC Kansas, where an 18-year-old with a known history of sexually abusing others had also been placed. The Kansas Department for Children and Families and KVC each pointed at the other. A Wyandotte County District Court settlement requires the Kansas foster care system to pay $1.25 million.

A Kansas jury found Wesley Medical Center 100 percent at fault for a delayed diagnosis of Stage IV non-Hodgkin's lymphoma that followed missed findings on a staff physician's annual chest X-rays, and awarded him $1,245,000. The Kansas Supreme Court held the evidence supported some hospital fault but not total fault, and ordered a new trial in 1998.

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 Sedgwick County jury found a Wichita family physician liable for diagnosing pneumonia in a man who died the next day of a large pulmonary embolism, awarding $982,143 in economic damages and nothing for noneconomic loss. The Kansas Court of Appeals reversed in 2010 after a juror said the verdict was a compromise reached to break a liability deadlock, and remanded for a new trial.

A 150-pound roll of vinyl flooring fell on a six-year-old girl at a Wichita lumber store in November 1987, fracturing her skull in three places and damaging her pituitary gland, which left her with permanent diabetes insipidus. A Sedgwick County jury found Star Lumber & Supply 95 percent at fault and her parents 5 percent at fault, with total damages of $761,211.38. Judgment was entered for $723,150.81, and the Kansas Court of Appeals and Kansas Supreme Court both affirmed.

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.