Largest Louisiana Personal Injury Recoveries Confirmed Paid

As chair of the plaintiffs' negotiating committee and Liaison Counsel in the Vioxx multidistrict litigation, Russ Herman directed the negotiations that produced a $4.85 billion settlement with Merck resolving approximately 45,000 to 50,000 personal-injury claims.

Joseph Bruno and Bruno & Bruno served as lead plaintiffs' counsel in a landmark class action brought by more than 8,000 Gentilly residents exposed to a butadiene tank-car fire in 1987, securing a jury verdict that included $2.5 billion in punitive damages against CSX Transportation alone, later reduced to $850 million on appeal and affirmed by Louisiana's Fourth Circuit.

A New Orleans jury ordered the major tobacco companies to fund a statewide smoking-cessation program for more than 200,000 Louisiana smokers who became addicted before 1988, awarding $591 million in one of the largest class-action verdicts against the tobacco industry.

Jose Valdivia, 25, was building scaffolding at the Phillips 66 refinery in Lake Charles when a co-worker above him lost his grip on a steel scaffold bar. It struck him on the head and spine through a hard hat and full protective equipment. He is in a wheelchair with limited speech. Brock never reported the accident to OSHA.

A New Orleans jury ordered four major tobacco companies to fund a $591 million statewide smoking cessation program for more than 200,000 Louisiana smokers, the first verdict of its kind in U.S. history.

Representing more clergy abuse survivors in the Archdiocese of New Orleans bankruptcy than any other firm, Herman, Katz, Gisleson and Cain helped push a five-year Chapter 11 proceeding to a $230 million settlement confirmed in December 2025, with additional recovery against Travelers Insurance still pending.

Joseph Bruno served on the eight-member Plaintiffs' Legal Committee in a federal class action covering more than 17,000 people harmed when a corrosion failure triggered a catastrophic pre-dawn explosion at Shell's Norco, Louisiana refinery in May 1988, ultimately settling for nearly $172 million.

A 6-year-old girl was killed in the parking lot of a Slidell Catholic school. The school's after-school Run Club sent children as young as six along a route that crossed the afternoon carpool lane while cars were moving. Her 10-year-old brother watched it happen.

Sherri Tramble, 36, was a St. Landry Parish paramedic riding unrestrained in the back of an ambulance, starting an IV on a patient en route to hospital, when a pickup turned across the ambulance's path without yielding. She has multiple skull fractures, a C-7 fracture and a permanent traumatic brain injury, and has since been interdicted.

Joseph Bruno served as class counsel in a long-running class action on behalf of children who suffered lead poisoning from hazardous paint in Housing Authority of New Orleans units, securing a settlement fund of roughly $65.5 million.

A Louisiana federal jury awarded Terrence Allen $9 billion in punitive damages against Takeda and Eli Lilly after finding they hid Actos's bladder cancer risk for years, with W. Mark Lanier serving as lead trial counsel in the first federal bellwether trial of the massive MDL.

Katie Carmouche was stopped on Highway 1 waiting to turn into her children's daycare with her three children in the back seat. A cement truck rear-ended her at high speed, crushing the back of the car and shoving it into oncoming traffic. Her 8-year-old daughter was killed; her two sons were badly injured.

Joseph Bruno led a class-action lawsuit against Tenet Healthcare after 45 patients died at Memorial Medical Center during Hurricane Katrina, securing a $25 million settlement in 2011.

AIX Energy ordered a workover cleanout on a Claiborne Parish well using completion fluid far too light to hold back the formation's gas pressure, and never wrote or circulated a completion plan to the crew. Gas broke out and ignited. Jeremy Shephard, the toolpusher, was burned over a third to half of his body.

Erie Moore Sr., 57, a mill worker with no criminal record, was arrested on October 12, 2015 for disturbing the peace at a Monroe doughnut shop and taken to Richwood Correctional Center, a private jail LaSalle Corrections ran for the city. Over about 36 hours guards pepper-sprayed him repeatedly, struck him on the head, slammed him head-first into the floor, and left him roughly 90 minutes in an area with no cameras and no medical check. He died on November 14, 2015 of a brain hematoma; the parish coroner ruled it a homicide. On October 20, 2025 a federal jury awarded his three children $42,750,000. In May and June 2026 the court remitted it to $16,741,148.84 with a further fault reduction, and both sides appealed.

Barber Brothers was reopening an I-10 exit in LaPlace after a night of asphalt work. Its supervisor was backing an F-250 against traffic along a shoulder so narrow that the truck's left front tire sat over the fog line in the live lane. Frank Cushenberry hit it at 65 mph in a box truck and left the road with a traumatic brain injury.

Paul Galland was a deckhand doing repairs aboard an LNG-powered supply vessel at Port Fourchon. LNG vapor had accumulated near a vent on the fly deck. He lit a cigarette and it flashed. He escaped by jumping between decks, breaking his leg on the way down, and suffered severe burns.

Jerrod Snearl, 22, was riding in the middle of the front seat of his employer's empty dump truck on the way to a tree-clearing job when the driver swerved on the I-12 overpass at Jefferson Highway in Baton Rouge, the brakes locked, and the truck rode up over the bridge rail and fell about 30 feet onto the bank of Ward's Creek, where it caught fire. The driver burned to death. Snearl, trapped with a broken pelvis, was burned over 51 percent of his body and lost both legs, his penis, a testicle and his spleen. An Iberville Parish jury found the state's bridge rail an unreasonable risk of harm and awarded him $9,352,826.67, which the First Circuit affirmed in 2001 while raising the driver's fault and reallocating it to the state.

Alise Ardoin was a 26-year-old pediatric oncology nurse. On her day off she was driving to a Lafayette mall to buy a dress for the funeral of one of her child patients. A commercial pickup rear-ended her at roughly 40 mph and pushed her into the car ahead, whipping her head in two directions. The brain injury and the headache disorder that followed ended her nursing career.

Walter Jackson, 48, was a rigger on an offshore platform 65 miles south of Lake Charles. The crew was lowering sections of corroded firewater pipe when the manila rope holding a 131-pound section broke. He was standing in a landing zone nobody had cleared, and it killed him instantly.

David Stauder Jr., a union pipefitter, was exposed to asbestos at Louisiana industrial plants including Union Carbide's facility in Taft through the 1960s and 1970s. He was diagnosed with mesothelioma in his seventies and died within two months, on April 30, 2015. His two daughters tried the case against Union Carbide, the last defendant standing, and in December 2021 a New Orleans jury returned $10,354,620.31 and assigned Union Carbide 20 percent of the fault. The judgment against it came to about $6.19 million, and it survived two rounds in the Fourth Circuit and a Louisiana Supreme Court vacatur before the writ was finally denied in April 2025.

An Oklahoma lineman sent to help restore power after Hurricane Gustav was electrocuted near Jennings, Louisiana, when a line he had been told was dead was re-energized. He suffered severe burns, a partial foot amputation and lasting neurological injury. An Orleans Parish jury put 50 percent of the fault on Entergy, and the Fourth Circuit entered judgment against Entergy for its half of the amended damages, $4,811,015, which stood after the Louisiana Supreme Court denied review.

The City of Baton Rouge agreed to pay $4.5 million to the five children of Alton Sterling, who was fatally shot by police outside a Baton Rouge convenience store in July 2016, after the East Baton Rouge Metro Council approved the settlement in February 2021.

Derek Hebert, 22, was thrown from a boat when its Teleflex hydraulic steering failed at speed. With the kill switch not engaged, the boat kept circling under power and its propeller struck him nineteen times. Teleflex had known since 1989 that losing two or three teaspoons of fluid causes total steering failure.