Top Massachusetts Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements

The family of Greg Sharrigan, killed when a gas leak ignited at his Maynard home in September 2021, sued Eversource for $450 million, alleging the utility detected the underground leak three years before the fatal explosion and never fixed it.

Thornton Law Firm served as liaison counsel on a multi-firm team that secured a $300 million class settlement from State Street Bank on behalf of pension funds and other institutional custodial clients who were secretly overcharged on foreign currency exchange trades for more than a decade.

A Suffolk County jury awarded $200 million in October 2023 -- the largest wrongful death award in Boston history -- against R.J. Reynolds for the lung cancer death of Rita Jones, who first received free Newport cigarettes as a teenager in 1964.

After winning a $26.6 million jury verdict for a union mason who fell through defective scaffolding on the Longfellow Bridge, Andrew Abraham of Keches Law Group returned to court and proved that Liberty Mutual's insurers willfully refused to investigate or settle a clear liability case, prompting a judge to double the compensatory judgment to over $91 million under Chapter 93A and 176D.

Peter Merrigan of Sweeney Merrigan Personal Injury Lawyers represented 125 Massachusetts cities and towns in claims against Johnson and Johnson and the three largest opioid distributors, recovering $84.1 million in aggregate from the national opioid settlements.

A Middlesex County jury awarded Malcolm Carnwath $56 million -- the largest single-plaintiff personal-injury verdict in Massachusetts history -- after an Amazon delivery driver fell asleep, crossed the center line on a Portsmouth, New Hampshire road, and struck his vehicle head-on, causing a leg amputation, multiple strokes, and permanent brain injury.

A Massachusetts jury returned a $1 billion punitive verdict against Philip Morris in 2022 over the lung cancer death of Barbara Fontaine, a case handled in part by Rubenstein Law attorney Kevin Donovan; the punitive award was later reduced to $56 million, a figure the state Supreme Judicial Court upheld in April 2026.

David and Ina Steiner, founders of the e-commerce news site EcommerceBytes, settled their civil lawsuit against eBay and former company executives for $55.7 million after a coordinated 2019 stalking and harassment campaign targeted them in retaliation for their reporting.

A Middlesex County jury awarded $26.6 million to union mason John Rooney, Jr. after he fell through a two-foot scaffold gap during the Longfellow Bridge rehabilitation and suffered seven spinal operations and permanent disability, with pre-judgment interest bringing the total compensatory judgment to roughly $45.5 million.

A Massachusetts jury found Johnson & Johnson liable for Paul Lovell's mesothelioma, awarding $42.6 million in what is believed to be the largest mesothelioma verdict in the state's history.

A Middlesex County jury returned the largest personal-injury verdict in Massachusetts history after finding that an obstetrician waited more than five hours to perform an emergency C-section despite clear signs of fetal distress, causing a Dracut boy to develop cerebral palsy.

A Boston jury returned a $39 million verdict against talc supplier Cimbar Performance Minerals after finding that asbestos-contaminated talc used in a 2014 chest procedure caused Bryce Zundel's mesothelioma seven years later, marking the first trial anywhere to connect the common pleurodesis technique to asbestos disease.

A Norfolk Superior Court jury awarded Andrea Larkin $35.4 million after finding that Dedham Medical Associates failed to document a known brain abnormality, leaving her obstetrician unaware of a condition that made vaginal delivery dangerous.

A Suffolk County jury awarded $30.55 million to the family of a boy left with catastrophic brain damage after a traveling nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital abandoned continuous fetal heart-rate monitoring during a prolonged second stage of labor.

An Essex Superior Court jury awarded $29 million to the two daughters of Joseph Brown, 43, after Salem Hospital emergency physicians failed to order a CT scan that would have revealed a fatal aortic aneurysm and dissection in time for lifesaving surgery.

A Suffolk County jury awarded $28 million, including $25 million in punitive damages, after Father's Huddle Cafe in Boston served alcohol to underage patrons who attacked Thomas Christopher, 23, chasing him into traffic where he was struck and killed; the Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed the verdict against the bar on January 28, 2003.

A Boston jury awarded $21 million to the widow of a Lynn man who died of lung cancer after taking up smoking at 13, when a salesman handed him a free pack of Marlboros, with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirming the verdict in full in 2021.

A Middlesex County jury awarded Joseph Reppucci and his wife $20.7 million after finding that R.J. Reynolds and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. bore responsibility for the oropharyngeal cancer he developed following decades of smoking their cigarettes.

A Salem jury awarded $20.6 million, including $18 million in punitive damages, after a defective Banzai inflatable pool slide sold by Toys R Us collapsed and killed a 29-year-old woman in Andover, Massachusetts; the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld the full verdict in 2013.

A Middlesex Superior Court jury awarded Steven Luppold $20 million after Lowell General Hospital emergency staff misdiagnosed a leg blood clot as sciatica on two separate visits, delaying treatment until amputation was unavoidable.

A federal jury in Boston awarded $18.4 million to Sean Stentiford, a former paramedic turned attorney, after two Lahey Clinic physicians canceled an HIV test he had consented to in 2007, allowing the virus to progress undetected to AIDS and cause permanent brain damage.

A decayed tree from a neighbor's rental lot in Orange, Massachusetts fell on three women in August 2024, causing traumatic brain injuries and fractures; Franklin County Superior Court entered a $17.6 million judgment against the property owner in March 2026.

A Suffolk Superior Court jury awarded $16.7 million after a Brigham and Women's Hospital radiologist read a 2006 chest X-ray as normal, missing a visible lung nodule that would develop into terminal cancer within 13 months.

Lubin and Meyer secured a $15 million settlement for the family of six-month-old Jackson Kekula, who suffered catastrophic brain injury after going without oxygen for more than 20 minutes during a sleep study at Boston Children's Hospital and died 12 days later.