Largest Minnesota Group Settlements and Injury Recovery Funds

A Ramsey County jury awarded $65.5 million to Anna Jean Houghton Carley, a 37-year-old mother of three diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma after childhood exposure to Johnson and Johnson Baby Powder, in what attorneys described as the largest asbestos verdict in Minnesota history.

William Sieben of Schwebel, Goetz & Sieben co-led a class of approximately 100,000 current and former Minnesota Walmart employees whose wage-and-hour claims resulted in a $54.25 million settlement after a judge found more than two million violations of state labor law.

James Schwebel represented 34 victims in a three-year lawsuit against engineering firm URS Corp, whose negligent inspection of the Minneapolis I-35W bridge preceded its August 2007 collapse, killing 13 people and injuring 145 others.

Ben Crump, with co-counsel Antonio Romanucci and L. Chris Stewart, negotiated a $27 million settlement between the family of George Floyd and the City of Minneapolis, announced by the family's lawyers as the largest pretrial settlement of a civil rights wrongful-death claim in American history. The city council approved the payment unanimously in March 2021, while jury selection in Derek Chauvin's murder trial was underway blocks away.

A six-week Anoka County trial ended with a $24 million jury verdict against BNSF Railway after four young people died at a malfunctioning Ferry Street grade crossing in September 2003.

A Kandiyohi County jury awarded $23.2 million on February 9, 2010, to a Paynesville family whose daughter was born without breathing after a labor induction and a delayed cesarean at Rice Memorial Hospital in Willmar. She has spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, seizures and cortical impairment. The jury put 80 percent of the fault on Affiliated Community Medical Centers and 20 percent on the hospital. It was described at the time as the largest medical malpractice award in Minnesota state history.

Justine Ruszczyk Damond called 911 to report a woman screaming behind her house, then walked out in her pajamas to meet the squad car. Officer Mohamed Noor shot her from the passenger seat. Minneapolis settled with her family for $20 million in May 2019, more than four times the largest police payout in the city's history.

A Dakota County jury awarded Jeffrey Wu and his wife $18.4 million after his 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee's defective monostable gear shifter caused a rollaway that crushed his left leg and required amputation.

Terrance Winborn was booked into the Scott County Jail on a suspected DUI. A bacterial infection went untreated in custody until it caused septic shock, a heart attack and gangrene, and surgeons amputated both of his arms below the elbows. The county and its insurer settled his Section 1983 claim for $12.2 million.

A federal jury in Minnesota found Toyota 60 percent at fault for a 2006 crash in which a Camry accelerated without driver input and struck a stopped vehicle, killing several occupants, and awarded the Trice and Adams families $11.4 million.

A Minnesota jury awarded $10.2 million to Daniel Heyer, diagnosed with mesothelioma at 43 after decades of exposure to store-brand talc body powders sold under Target, Walmart, and Walgreens labels, finding all five defendant manufacturers liable for producing defective and unreasonably dangerous products.

A Hennepin County jury awarded $6 million after a drop-in daycare at Grand Casino Mille Lacs left a three-year-old boy unsupervised for roughly 90 minutes while an older child physically and sexually assaulted him.

A Hennepin County jury awarded $5.33 million after a Metro Transit bus driver closed the doors and pulled away while Christopher Swickard was approaching, causing the rear wheels to run over him and require amputation of his left leg below the knee.

Following a $24 million wrongful-death jury verdict, Anoka County District Court Judge Ellen Maas imposed more than $4.2 million in additional sanctions against BNSF Railway for destroying evidence, fabricating records, and obstructing the investigation of a crash that killed four young people.

Ben Crump and co-counsel representing the family of Daunte Wright reached a $3.25 million settlement with the City of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, over the 2021 traffic-stop shooting in which officer Kim Potter fired her handgun after shouting "Taser." The agreement, announced in June 2022, also called for changes to the department's policing practices and ranked among the largest civil rights wrongful-death settlements in Minnesota history.

A 53-year-old nurse rear-ended by a semi-truck on Highway 94 suffered a mild traumatic brain injury that cut her working capacity in half, and a three-attorney arbitration panel awarded her $3,041,784 after four years of litigation.

AirMaxx Trampoline Park in St. Cloud, Minnesota agreed to pay $3 million to settle claims brought by Anthony Seitz, a Brainerd man left permanently paralyzed after striking the bottom of a foam pit at the facility in August 2015.

Philando Castile told a St. Anthony officer he was carrying a licensed firearm and was shot seconds later during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights. After the officer's acquittal, his mother settled the family's wrongful death claims for $2.995 million without ever filing a federal lawsuit.

Thirteen years after Minneapolis florist Robert Nachtsheim was shot and killed in an officially unsolved homicide, a Hennepin County jury found businessman Norman Wartnick civilly liable and awarded his widow $2,350,000 in compensatory and punitive damages, a verdict the Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed in 1987.

Dakota County paid $2.25 million to settle a wrongful death suit brought by Tory Hart after county child protection workers recommended reuniting his six-year-old son with the mother, who fatally shot the child ten days after a court terminated its jurisdiction.

A 91-year-old woman lost her leg in a car accident where fault was admitted immediately, but American Family Insurance delayed paying her claim for months; a Minnesota jury awarded $2.2 million after the insurer's repeated low offers.

A corporate executive and mother of two suffered a traumatic brain injury when an underinsured driver T-boned her car; her own insurer, Acuity, offered $250,000 against a $1.5 million policy, and a Minnesota jury returned a $2.1 million verdict.

A TSR Injury Law trial team secured a $1.1 million jury verdict for a woman who suffered three cervical surgeries after a 16-year-old driving on only a learner's permit struck her car broadside.

A Jackson County jury awarded Minnesota dairy farmers Chuck and Wanda Untiedt $1,038,775 after their herd was decimated by a defective cattle vaccine containing live virus sold by Grand Laboratories, Inc.