Largest Maine Personal Injury Settlements
The largest personal injury settlements in Maine for one client or family, ranked by amount. Each links to the full story, the firm, and the record behind the number.
Browse personal injury lawyers in Maine →- $8 millionSettlementPaidMedical Malpractice
$8 Million Settlement After Clinic Documented Signs of Abuse on Infant and Never Reported Them
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 $10,000,000 figure was announced in February 2022, but the settlement approved in August 2022 was $8,000,000.
15 results, largest first
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
An Androscoggin County jury awarded Marielle Bischoff-Wurstle $5.5 million after Affordable Cremation Solution in Lewiston, Maine, left her father's remains unrefrigerated in an overheated basement for more than two weeks in summer 2021.
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.
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.
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.
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.
John Pierce was sent home from a Bangor emergency department before his blood cultures came back. They were positive for a bacterium that signals a potentially fatal heart-valve infection. The result never reached his primary care physician, the infection ran untreated for eight months, and it destroyed his heart valves.
A federal judge awarded $1,380,414.82 to the widow of Roy Palmer, a 69-year-old Army veteran who died at the Togus VA Medical Center in Augusta, Maine after staff co-administered an opioid and a benzodiazepine that carry an FDA black-box warning against simultaneous use.
A Hancock County jury awarded $750,000 to a Milbridge woman who suffered permanent hip and leg impairment after her orthopedic surgeon failed to review her post-operative X-rays for over two months and then left a centimeter-long gap in her femur during revision surgery.
Michael Whittier of Poland, Maine, reached a confidential settlement with Central Maine Medical Center after its physicians failed to act on dangerously elevated PSA levels for four years, allowing his prostate cancer to spread beyond the point of surgical cure.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.