Largest Maryland Personal Injury Verdicts Never Collected

More than 8,000 women reached a $190 million class-action settlement against Johns Hopkins Hospital after gynecologist Dr. Nikita Levy secretly filmed patients during examinations over a 25-year career.

A Baltimore City jury awarded $55 million after Johns Hopkins Hospital delayed an emergency cesarean section for more than two hours following a home-birth transfer, leaving infant Enzo Martinez with permanent cerebral palsy and profound neurological injuries.

Hassan Murphy co-led the class action against Constellation Energy after fly ash from a coal plant fouled private drinking wells in a Gambrills neighborhood, producing a $54 million package that connected affected homes to public water and established a $9.5 million resident trust fund.

William H. Murphy Jr. won a $44 million Baltimore jury verdict after a police officer threw handcuffed Albert Mosley headfirst into a concrete jail cell wall, rendering him a permanent quadriplegic; the city refused to pay and the case ultimately settled for $1 million.

Geoff McDonald and co-counsel represented roughly 7,600 universal life policyholders hit with steep cost-of-insurance increases by Banner Life and William Penn, securing a $22.5 million cash fund inside a settlement the court valued at more than $40 million.

Murphy Falcon and Murphy served as lead class counsel in a $37 million settlement on behalf of 273 patients who underwent medically unnecessary cardiac stent procedures performed by Dr. Mark Midei at St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson, Maryland.

After a 13-week trial, a Baltimore City jury awarded $34.33 million to 20 Ruth's Chris Steakhouse workers and three of their spouses after the workers suffered permanent brain damage when carbon monoxide from Pier Five Hotel's boiler system flooded their workplace over several months in early 2008.

A Baltimore City jury returned a $105 million wrongful-death verdict against off-duty Officer Rodney Price, who shot Tristin Little Sr. more than a dozen times with his service weapon in March 2001; the trial court later reduced the award to approximately $26.99 million.

A Baltimore County jury found that University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center performed an unjustified emergency cesarean section on a mother showing no confirmed signs of labor, delivering her son at 23 weeks and causing severe brain damage that will require lifelong care.

A Montgomery County, Maryland jury in October 2014 returned a verdict against Pepco for a construction worker who was shocked by a transformer he had been told was de-energized and left paralyzed from the neck down. The jury awarded about $35.94 million, and Maryland's cap on noneconomic damages cut the $15 million noneconomic portion to $770,000, leaving about $21.71 million.

A Baltimore City jury returned a $21.5 million verdict against two landlord companies whose failure to conduct any background check on a maintenance worker allowed a convicted sex offender to rape, slash, and set two tenants on fire.

A Baltimore City jury returned a $21 million verdict against MedStar Harbor Hospital after physicians failed to perform a timely emergency cesarean section during a premature delivery, causing a newborn to suffer oxygen deprivation and permanent spastic diplegic cerebral palsy.

William H. Murphy Jr. secured a $20 million settlement for the family of William Howard Green, a 43-year-old father shot six times by a Prince George's County officer while handcuffed in the front seat of a patrol car, at the time the largest such settlement ever paid by a Maryland local government.

A Prince George's County jury found University of Maryland Capital Region Health liable for the amputation of Jamie White's leg after two surgeries were delayed for hours following a 2020 slip-and-fall, cutting off oxygen to her limb for an irreversible stretch of time.

A Harford County jury returned a $13.3 million verdict against Upper Chesapeake Medical Center and its attending obstetrician after nursing staff failed to recognize fetal distress signals during a 17-hour induced labor, leaving a boy born in 2004 with permanent brain damage and intellectual disability.

In 1972, an eight-year-old girl spent months in her family's Montgomery County, Maryland basement while her father applied and sanded a Georgia-Pacific joint compound during a home renovation. She developed mesothelioma decades later and died at 34, shortly after a jury awarded her and her husband $9,188,000, including $4,800,000 in non-economic damages. Georgia-Pacific appealed on causation and on whether Maryland's 1986 cap on non-economic damages limited the award. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed, and the Court of Appeals of Maryland affirmed again on June 11, 2002, holding that the cap did not apply because her exposure ended before the cap took effect.

In March 2023, Prince George's County, Maryland agreed to pay $7.5 million to Rena Ward, the mother of Demonte Ward-Blake, and his estate. Ward-Blake was paralyzed after a county police officer slammed him, handcuffed, onto the pavement during an October 2019 traffic stop. The federal civil rights and wrongful death suit was settled without any admission of wrongdoing by the county.

Freddie Gray, 25, suffered a fatal spinal injury while being transported in a Baltimore police van after his arrest on April 12, 2015, and died a week later. In September 2015 the city agreed to pay his family $6.4 million, and the Board of Estimates approved the payment unanimously on September 9. The city admitted no liability, and the money was paid in two installments from the city's settlement reserve.

A Montgomery County jury found a Maryland dermatology practice liable for the death of 47-year-old attorney Richard Semsker, whose melanoma went untreated for two years.

A Prince George's County jury awarded $5.5 million after a 53-year-old woman bled to death when improperly placed cardiac pacing wires lacerated her bypass graft upon removal five days after open-heart surgery.

After a February 2006 bench trial under the Federal Tort Claims Act, a federal judge in Maryland found that providers at Malcolm Grow Medical Center missed Ruth Lawson's Chiari Type I malformation during her second pregnancy, leaving her permanently and severely brain-damaged. The court entered a $5,264,657.01 judgment in September 2006, after cutting her $1.8 million noneconomic award to Maryland's $590,000 statutory cap.

A Baltimore City jury awarded $5.2 million after Saint Agnes Hospital emergency staff sent Kevin Tolson home with a knee-strain diagnosis, missing a torn popliteal artery that led to an above-the-knee amputation two days later.

Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Dana Middleton awarded $3,250,479 to four plaintiffs, including a toddler with severe burns to her face and hands, after a temple founder added gasoline to a wind-whipped bonfire during a 2024 harvest festival in South Baltimore.

A Harford County jury found two vascular surgeons negligent in a 2007 aortobifemoral bypass during which the patient lost nearly all of her blood volume and was left permanently paralyzed from the waist down. The jury awarded $3,557,398, and the court reduced the pain and suffering portion under Maryland's cap on non-economic damages, entering judgment for $2,874,398. The Court of Special Appeals ordered a new trial in 2012, but the Court of Appeals of Maryland reversed it in 2013 and directed that the judgment be affirmed.