Largest Medical Malpractice Personal Injury Verdicts Never Collected
Personal injury verdicts for medical malpractice cases that were awarded and stand, but that the record shows could not be collected: a defendant who was uninsured, closed, bankrupt, or in prison. Each is ranked at what the court awarded and labeled.
- $951 millionVerdictNot collectableUT
Utah Judge Awards $951 Million Over Botched Delivery at Steward-Owned Jordan Valley Medical Center
A Utah judge entered a $951 million default judgment against Steward Health Care after newly trained nurses, an excessive Pitocin drip, and a delayed C-section at Jordan Valley Medical Center left a newborn permanently brain damaged.
After trial: Steward Health Care, the defendant, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2024 amid the collapse of its hospital chain. After the August 2025 verdict, attorneys for the family said it was uncertain whether they could ever collect and were hoping to recover at least the roughly $475 million awarded in punitive damages.
Claggett & Sykes Trial Lawyers2025 · Third District Court, Salt Lake City, UtahRead the full story → - $330.07 millionVerdictReduced from $2.23 billionNot collectableMO
Kansas City Jury's $2.2 Billion Verdict Over Diluted Chemotherapy
Georgia Hayes, a Kansas City area ovarian cancer patient, sued pharmacist Robert Courtney after learning he had diluted the chemotherapy drugs used in her treatment. A Jackson County jury found Courtney liable and awarded Hayes $225,571,439 in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages, the first of hundreds of similar suits against Courtney to reach trial. The trial judge later found the award excessive and cut it by remittitur to $330,071,439, and that reduced judgment stood. Hayes herself and the case reporter covering the verdict both said she was unlikely to ever collect a significant portion of it.
After trial: Reduced by remittitur. The judge cut the jury's punitive award, leaving a $330,071,439 judgment that stood, and no appellate decision disturbing it has been reported.
Ketchmark & McCreight, P.C. and Davis, Bethune & Jones, L.L.C.2002 · Circuit Court of Jackson County, Missouri (Kansas City)Read the full story → - $307.6 millionVerdictOn appealNot collectableMI
Detroit Federal Jury Awards $307.6 Million Over a Denied $919 Surgery
A Detroit federal jury awarded former Michigan inmate Kohchise Jackson $307.6 million after the state's for-profit prison health contractor refused to pay for the $919 surgery that would have reversed his colostomy.
After trial: Post-trial motions and an appeal are pending, and collection is seriously at risk: Corizon reorganized into Tehum Care Services, which filed for bankruptcy, leaving corporate-veil and bankruptcy-stay questions unresolved.
Marko Law Firm2026 · U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan (Detroit)Read the full story → - $100 millionVerdictNot collectableFL
$100 Million Verdict for Infant Maimed in Circumcision by a Doctor Whose License Had Already Been Revoked
A Palm Beach County jury awarded $100 million against former OB/GYN Berto Lopez, who performed a catastrophic circumcision on a 10-day-old boy ten days after the Florida Board of Medicine revoked his license, though the unlicensed doctor skipped the trial and collection remains doubtful.
After trial: Default-style verdict against an unlicensed, unrepresented doctor with no known assets; the judgment is held in trust for the child but is considered uncollectable.
- $15.71 millionNot collectableAR
$15.71 Million Judgment for Woman Who Died of Bedsore Sepsis After Nursing Home Stopped Defending Case
Zelma Grissom was wholly dependent on staff at Hillview Post Acute and Rehabilitation Center to turn her in bed, which has to happen about every two hours to prevent pressure injury. Staff did not. She developed a bedsore, it became infected, and she died of sepsis in May 2018 at 81. Her family won $15,706,166. Not a dollar of it has been paid.
After trial: Final and entirely uncollected. Liability was established by summary judgment in April 2020 after the defendants stopped defending, damages were fixed in February 2023, and an attempt to overturn the judgment failed.
- $5.52 millionVerdictReduced from $5.6 millionNot collectableHI
Jury Awards Family of Hilo Patient Over $5 Million After Surgeon Implants Cut Screwdriver in Spine
A Hawaii County jury in 2006 awarded the family of a 73-year-old patient about $5.6 million after surgeon Robert Ricketson implanted a cut screwdriver shaft in his spine at Hilo Medical Center. The jury put 65 percent of the fault on Ricketson and 35 percent on the hospital for credentialing him, with $3.4 million in punitive damages against Ricketson. The trial judge cut the hospital's share, the appeals court largely upheld that cut while keeping the hospital jointly liable, and the judgment against Ricketson was $5,517,500.
After trial: The trial judge set the hospital's liability at $629,250, and in 2012 the Intermediate Court of Appeals vacated and remanded, keeping the hospital jointly liable and ordering a Medtronic retrial. The judgment against Ricketson, including $3.4 million in punitive damages, is doubtful to be paid because he was uninsured and his whereabouts were uncertain.
Davis Levin Livingston2006 · Circuit Court of the Third Circuit, Hawaii County (Hilo), HawaiiRead the full story →
371 results, largest first
A Utah judge entered a $951 million default judgment against Steward Health Care after newly trained nurses, an excessive Pitocin drip, and a delayed C-section at Jordan Valley Medical Center left a newborn permanently brain damaged.
A Gainesville jury awarded $900 million, including $700 million in punitive damages, to stroke survivor Joseph Webb over neglect at the University Place Care and Rehabilitation Center, in a Wilkes & McHugh case tried against defaulted Trans Healthcare entities with no defense present, but Florida's First District Court of Appeal reversed the judgment in 2013 because the trial court had refused to let a defense lawyer appear, and the money was never collected; the estate's claim was later resolved for a small share of a multi-estate bankruptcy settlement.
A Clark County jury ordered Health Plan of Nevada and Sierra Health Services to pay $524 million after finding the UnitedHealth Group subsidiaries negligently credentialed a gastroenterologist whose unsafe injection practices at his Las Vegas endoscopy clinics caused the largest medically caused hepatitis C outbreak in American history.
Georgia Hayes, a Kansas City area ovarian cancer patient, sued pharmacist Robert Courtney after learning he had diluted the chemotherapy drugs used in her treatment. A Jackson County jury found Courtney liable and awarded Hayes $225,571,439 in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages, the first of hundreds of similar suits against Courtney to reach trial. The trial judge later found the award excessive and cut it by remittitur to $330,071,439, and that reduced judgment stood. Hayes herself and the case reporter covering the verdict both said she was unlikely to ever collect a significant portion of it.
A Detroit federal jury awarded former Michigan inmate Kohchise Jackson $307.6 million after the state's for-profit prison health contractor refused to pay for the $919 surgery that would have reversed his colostomy.
A Dallas County jury returned one of the largest medical-malpractice verdicts in the country after a teenager with cerebral palsy died at Medical City Dallas when hospital staff administered multiple times the appropriate dose of the anesthetic propofol following a routine airway procedure.
On November 9, 2023, a Sarasota County jury awarded the Kowalski family more than $261 million against Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital: about $211.5 million in compensatory damages plus $50 million in punitive damages, in the case behind the Netflix documentary Take Care of Maya. None of that judgment stands today. The trial judge cut $47.5 million from the award in January 2024, and on October 29, 2025 Florida's Second District Court of Appeal reversed the judgment entirely, holding that the trial court misapplied the statutory immunity for good-faith child-abuse reporting, directing judgment for the hospital on several claims and ordering a new trial on the rest. In August 2026 the Florida Supreme Court declined to review that ruling, so the surviving claims head back to Sarasota County for a narrower retrial. AndersonGlenn tried the original case for the family, and this page documents the full arc, verdict and reversal alike.
A Hillsborough County jury awarded $216.8 million to Allan Navarro after an emergency room misdiagnosed his stroke as sinusitis, leaving him permanently paralyzed. It was the largest medical malpractice verdict in Florida history at the time.
A Philadelphia jury found the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania liable for the brain injury a newborn suffered when staff delayed a cesarean section, a $182.7 million verdict that grew to a molded judgment of about $207.6 million, the largest medical malpractice award in Pennsylvania history. Kline & Specter argued and won the appeal, where the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed the full $207.6 million judgment in July 2025.
A Philadelphia jury returned a $182.7 million verdict, later reaching $207.6 million with interest and upheld through the Pennsylvania Superior Court in July 2025, against the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for a 45-minute delay in performing a C-section on a mother with a known uterine infection, leaving her child with permanent cerebral palsy.
A Philadelphia jury in May 2005 awarded two women a combined $200 million for heart-valve injuries caused by Wyeth's fen-phen diet drugs, with Steve Kherkher of Williams Bailey (now Kherkher Garcia) leading the trial, before a judge granted Wyeth's post-trial motion and the case resolved through a confidential settlement.
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.
Thomas Moore won a $172 million jury verdict in Bronx Supreme Court for a woman left with catastrophic brain damage after FDNY EMTs responded to her 1998 cardiac arrest without essential equipment and advised her family to wait for a second ambulance instead of transporting her immediately.
After spinal surgery at the Detroit Medical Center's Children's Hospital of Michigan left a 10-year-old girl partially paralyzed and permanently incontinent, and her surgeon took two vacations before the hardware came out, a Wayne County jury awarded $135 million.
An Oakland County jury awarded the Tran family $130,571,897 in 2018 after finding that Beaumont Hospital technicians failed to call a code blue or provide chest compressions when a two-month-old infant suffered a breath-hold spell during a renal scan, leaving him with permanent brain damage and cerebral palsy.
A Suffolk County jury awarded $130 million to a girl who developed cerebral palsy after oxygen deprivation during her 2002 delivery at St. Charles Hospital, after Thomas A. Moore of Kramer, Dillof, Livingston & Moore tried the case three times; appellate review later cut the pain and suffering award to $4.25 million, and the firm reports the case resolved for $13.6 million in cash plus lifetime Medical Indemnity Fund coverage.
Schochor, Federico and Staton, P.A. represented the largest single group of plaintiffs in a $123 million class-action settlement against Beebe Medical Center for institutional failures that allowed pediatrician Earl Bradley to abuse hundreds of children over 15 years.
A Wayne County jury found Henry Ford Hospital negligent for a delay of over two hours in executing an ordered emergency C-section, awarding $120.9 million to a Detroit mother and her son, who was left with severe cerebral palsy and requires full-time care.
A Bronx jury awarded $120 million to Jacqueline Martin, a 45-year-old mother who suffered permanent brain damage after three New York City hospitals repeatedly failed to recognize and treat a severe allergic reaction to seizure medication that triggered Stevens-Johnson Syndrome.
Gillin, Jacobson, Ellis and Larsen recovered $111.7 million for 186 patients who underwent medically unjustified cardiac procedures at Tenet Healthcare's Redding Medical Center, the largest single-firm share of a $395 million mass settlement.
A Philadelphia jury awarded $108.6 million to a boy who suffered permanent brain damage during a December 2018 forceps delivery at Einstein Medical Center, in a case tried by Gilman & Bedigian against Jefferson Health. Jefferson has vowed to appeal, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is already reviewing the same liability doctrines in the firm's earlier $183 million Penn Medicine verdict, so the award is far from final.
A Palm Beach County jury awarded $100 million to a toddler left permanently injured after Dr. Berto Lopez performed a circumcision ten days after the Florida Board of Medicine revoked his license.
A Palm Beach County jury awarded $100 million against former OB/GYN Berto Lopez, who performed a catastrophic circumcision on a 10-day-old boy ten days after the Florida Board of Medicine revoked his license, though the unlicensed doctor skipped the trial and collection remains doubtful.
A Johnson County, Iowa jury awarded the family of an infant identified in court records by the initials S.K. $97.4 million in March 2022, finding an OB-GYN clinic and a hospital equally responsible for a delivery gone wrong at Mercy Hospital in Iowa City in August 2018. The verdict, then the largest medical malpractice award in Iowa history, followed a 14-day trial before Judge Kevin McKeever of the Sixth Judicial District. Mercy Hospital's share was capped at $7 million under a pretrial agreement, which the hospital paid; court filings put the clinic's share of the judgment at more than $75.6 million. The clinic, Obstetric & Gynecologic Associates of Iowa City and Coralville, P.C., did not pay, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October 2022, saw that case dismissed the following April, and appealed. On November 8, 2024, the Iowa Supreme Court reversed the judgment against the clinic over an evidentiary error and ordered a new trial. Nothing currently stands against the clinic, and no new trial date has been reported.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.