Top Individual Maine Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements

$23.1 Million Verdict After Radiologist Failed to Flag Spinal Cord Threat at Northern Light A.R. Gould Hospital

A jury awarded Robert Giordano $23.1 million after a Northern Light radiologist failed to report a large bony mass compressing his spinal cord, leaving him permanently paralyzed from the chest down.

She Went In to Have an Ovarian Cyst Removed. The Surgeon Took Out Her Healthy Bladder Instead, and a Kennebec County Jury Awarded $17 Million.

Emily Mitchell went to Inland Hospital in Waterville for laparoscopic surgery to remove a benign cyst on her left ovary. The surgeon removed her bladder instead, and pathology on the excised tissue found bladder wall and no ovarian tissue at all. She now lives with a bladder rebuilt from her small intestine. A jury awarded her $15.75 million and her husband $1.25 million.

After trial: The $17,000,000 is the full award with no statutory reduction, because Maine caps loss of comfort and companionship only in wrongful death actions and Emily Mitchell survived. As of this writing no post-trial motion and no notice of appeal has been reported. That verdict is recent and the absence of reporting is not proof there was no filing, and Northern Light Health has moved post-trial or appealed in other cases it lost in 2026, so treat the figure as standing at the trial-court level rather than as finally resolved.

A Gynecologist Called It a Hormone Condition. It Was Leukemia, and Maine's Cap Cut the $25 Million Verdict to $15.75 Million.

A Cumberland County jury awarded $25 million to the mother of a 15-year-old girl who died five days after a physician at Mid Coast Medical Group misdiagnosed her acute leukemia as a hormonal condition without ordering an X-ray. Maine's cap on wrongful-death companionship damages cut the $10 million half of that award to $750,000, leaving a judgment of $15.75 million. Both sides have appealed.

After trial: On appeal, not final. The jury returned $25,000,000 on October 30, 2025: $15,000,000 for the girl's conscious pain and suffering, which Maine does not cap, and $10,000,000 to her mother for loss of companionship, which Maine does. The Wrongful Death Act limit in force when the girl died in 2021 was $750,000, so that half of the award was reduced to $750,000 and the judgment is $15,750,000. Maine raised the cap to $1,000,000 in 2023, which does not reach this death. Justice Michael Duddy denied Mid Coast's motions for a new trial and for reduction of damages on March 4, 2026, finding ample competent evidence for the verdict, and both sides then noticed appeals to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court sitting as the Law Court. Plaintiff's counsel has said she will challenge the cap itself as unconstitutional, so the figure could move in either direction.

The Clinic Documented the Signs of Abuse on Her Infant Son and Never Told Her, and Never Told the State. He Was Beaten Nearly to Death at Six Months Old.

Alexandria Orduna brought her son to a Brewer clinic repeatedly from the time he was four days old. Staff saw and documented red-flag signs of physical abuse and never told her and never reported it to the state, as Maine law requires. At about six and a half months old he was beaten so badly he nearly died. He is permanently blind and brain-injured.

After trial: Approved by the court and final at $8,000,000. A tentative figure of $10,000,000 was announced in February 2022 and widely reported at that number; the settlement actually approved and announced in August 2022 was $8,000,000, and that is the figure that stood. No source we found explains the gap between the two. Most of the money funds a lifetime care trust paying roughly $17,000 a month. Maine's Wrongful Death Act caps do not apply because the child survived, and the Maine Tort Claims Act cap does not apply because the defendant was the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act rather than a Maine governmental entity.

$6.5 Million Verdict After Hospital Delayed Emergency Spinal Surgery Nearly 24 Hours

A Penobscot County jury awarded Travis Getchell $6.5 million after finding Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center negligent for delaying emergency surgery by nearly 24 hours, leaving him partially paralyzed.

$6.5 Million Verdict for Family of 25-Year-Old Who Died After Repeated Lyme Disease Misdiagnosis at Mercy Hospital

A Cumberland County jury awarded $6.5 million to the family of Peter Smith, a 25-year-old who died of Lyme carditis in July 2017 after a Mercy Hospital physician twice failed to diagnose his Lyme disease despite a textbook presentation of symptoms.

Jury Awards $5 Million to Bowdoinham Man After Walk-In Clinic Misses Sepsis, Sends Him Home With Flu Diagnosis

A Cumberland County jury found Mid Coast Hospital and its contracted emergency physician group liable after a walk-in clinic PA sent Joshua Desjardins home with a flu diagnosis in December 2018, when he was already showing signs of bacterial pneumonia and sepsis; three days later he was airlifted to Maine Medical Center, where he spent 31 days on life support and suffered more than ten strokes.

Federal Jury Awards $4.5 Million to Biddeford Woman Abused as a Child by Longtime Family Friend

An eight-member federal jury in Maine awarded $4.5 million to Julia Russell, finding Philip Chenevert liable for sexually abusing her beginning when she was six years old in 1992.

$2.4 Million Verdict for Frenchville Woman After Hospital Crushes Her Arm During Endoscopy

A Penobscot County jury awarded $2.4 million to Louise Brown after Northern Light EMMC staff failed to secure her left arm during a 2019 endoscopic procedure, causing permanent complex regional pain syndrome.

The Screw in His Wrist Was Sticking Out and Grinding Away Cartilage. It Took Another Surgeon to See It, and the Law Court Affirmed Every Dollar of $2 Million.

A hand surgeon put a compression screw into Robbie Nason's fractured wrist, then read several imaging studies over months without noticing the screw was protruding and grinding into cartilage. A second surgeon spotted it on sight. Nason lost the bone entirely, and the Law Court affirmed his $2 million verdict in full.

After trial: Final, and affirmed in full. The defendants appealed on excessive damages and on the jury instruction about collateral-source workers' compensation payments. The Law Court rejected both grounds in Nason v. Pruchnic, 2019 ME 38 (decided March 12, 2019, revised April 23, 2019, docket Pen-18-10), and the entry was simply Judgment affirmed. No part of the $2,000,000 was reduced by remittitur or by statute; Maine does not cap noneconomic damages in a non-death injury case.