Largest Massachusetts Group Settlements and Injury Recovery Funds

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.

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 Superior Court jury awarded $56 million on July 22, 2026 to Malcolm Carnwath, a 78-year-old retired realtor from Newburyport, Massachusetts. An Amazon delivery driver fell asleep and crossed the center line in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Nov. 16, 2024, causing a head-on crash. Mr. Carnwath suffered a cardiac arrest, multiple strokes with permanent brain injury, and a below-knee amputation of his left leg. Amazon accepted liability days before the two-day damages trial.

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.

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 Boston jury awarded $43.1 million on October 12, 2018 to the widow and son of Louis Summerlin, a former brake mechanic and lifelong menthol smoker who died of lung cancer in 2015 at 73, finding R.J. Reynolds' Salem and Kool cigarettes defectively designed and the company guilty of fraud, while clearing Philip Morris and an auto parts distributor. Jerome Block of Levy Konigsberg tried the case with Michael Shepard of Shepard Law. It was the first trial in the country to take a lung cancer claim to verdict against both tobacco and asbestos defendants, and the largest verdict in New England that year.

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 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 found on Sept. 13, 2024 that Cimbar Performance Minerals misrepresented the safety of its Elite Talc 2000 and that its negligence helped cause a Utah man's mesothelioma, which was diagnosed seven years after he received talc during a 2014 pleurodesis. It is the first known verdict on that theory. The jury awarded about $39.1 million, and the trial judge later cut the future pain and suffering item from $21.5 million to $6 million. About $23.6 million stood.

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.

A Suffolk Superior Court jury awarded $13.5 million (a $9.4 million verdict plus interest) to the family of Amy Altman, 40, who died of a flesh-eating bacterial infection in July 2003 after Dana-Farber oncologists failed to investigate 17 consecutive days of diarrhea during an experimental chemotherapy protocol.