Largest Missouri Personal Injury Recoveries Confirmed Paid
Personal injury results in Missouri where the record shows the money was paid, or the defendant is an insurer or institution that pays, ranked by amount.
Browse personal injury lawyers in Missouri →- $34.1 millionVerdictPaidMedical Malpractice
$34.1 Million Verdict Against CoxHealth for a Birth Injury Tied to Excessive Pitocin at a Springfield Hospital
A Greene County jury awarded $34,107,628 to a boy who suffered permanent brain damage during his 2014 birth at Cox South hospital in Springfield, where escalating doses of the labor drug Pitocin deprived him of oxygen. It was the largest medical malpractice verdict in Missouri in 2021, and because the injury predated the state's 2015 damages cap statute, the noneconomic award stood without reduction.
After trial: Missouri's damages cap did not apply because the 2015 cap statute postdated the 2014 injury. No appeal was reported and the funds were paid into a special needs trust in 2022.
- $2.35 millionVerdictPaidMedical Malpractice
Jury Finds Delivery Maneuvers, Not Labor, Caused Newborn's Arm Injury
A Greene County jury found that Dr. Chandria Johnson's delivery maneuvers, rather than the natural forces of labor, caused a brachial plexus nerve injury to a newborn boy identified as K.L. during his November 2014 birth at a Mercy Clinic Springfield Communities facility. Despite six corrective surgeries, the boy was left with permanent weakness in his arm. The jury returned a verdict of $2,348,338.60 against Mercy Clinic Springfield Communities and Dr. Johnson, and because the injury predated Missouri's 2015 noneconomic damages cap statute, the noneconomic award was not subject to a cap.
After trial: No cap applied: the 2014 birth predates the August 2015 effective date of Missouri's reinstated medical malpractice noneconomic damages cap, and Missouri does not apply such a cap retrospectively, so the jury's full noneconomic award stood. No appeal has been identified in Missouri Court of Appeals records or news coverage as of this review.
Johnson, Vorhees & Martucci2023 · Greene County Circuit Court, Springfield, MissouriRead the full story → - $1 millionVerdictPaidMedical Malpractice
Missed Bowel Ischemia After a Routine Hernia Repair Kills a Chef, $1 Million Verdict
Marcel Bonetti, 73, a chef who had cooked for Playboy Clubs, actor Kevin Costner, singer Tom Jones and former President Jimmy Carter, died in October 2016, days after an uncomplicated umbilical hernia repair. Two days after the operation he went to an emergency room with severe abdominal pain, and emergency physician Dr. Peter McCarthy diagnosed a common post-operative ileus without ordering blood work, a CT scan or a surgical consult. Bonetti kept getting worse until a CT scan two days later showed bowel ischemia; he was septic by the time he reached emergency surgery and died in intensive care that day. His family sued McCarthy and the emergency staffing company that employed him for wrongful death, and in October 2019 a St. Charles County jury awarded them $1,000,000.
After trial: No appeal was reported and no appellate opinion turned up in Missouri appellate records or in later news searches. Trial coverage listed Dr.
- $600,000PaidProduct Liability
Independence Woman Gets $600,000 Judgment Over Meat Grinder Design Defects
Terri Murphy of Independence, Missouri lost two and a half fingers and the tip of her thumb in 2017 when her hand was pulled into the auger of a LEM 'Big Bite' electric meat grinder while she was processing pork from her family's hobby farm. She sued the grinder's manufacturers, LEM Products Holding LLC, LEM Product Distribution LLC and LEM Product Direct LLC, alleging the machine had an oversized feed throat, could run with its safety feeder tray removed, carried inadequate warnings, and had a power switch she could not reach once her hand was caught. Rather than take the case to trial, the manufacturers made Murphy an offer of judgment, which she accepted, and the court entered a $600,000 judgment on January 25, 2023. Blake Green of BG Law and Adam Graves of Norman & Graves represented Murphy.
After trial: Judgment was entered on the defendants' own offer of judgment, which Murphy accepted, so the case ended by agreement rather than by a contested ruling and no appeal has been reported. Missouri Lawyers Media reported that the LEM entities were covered by Travelers, which is why this result is treated as insurer-backed rather than a bare paper judgment.
88 results, largest first
A St. Louis jury returned a $4.69 billion verdict against Johnson and Johnson on behalf of 22 women who developed ovarian cancer after years of using the company's talcum powder products, with Thomas K. Neill of Gray, Ritter and Graham, P.C. serving on the plaintiff trial team.
A St. Louis jury in July 2018 awarded 22 women and their families $4.69 billion, the largest U.S. verdict of that year, finding that asbestos in Johnson & Johnson's talcum powder products caused ovarian cancer; a Missouri appellate court upheld $2.11 billion in 2020.
A Cole County jury returned $1.56 billion in November 2023 across four plaintiffs whose claims were consolidated for one trial: three Roundup users who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma and the wife of one of them on a loss of consortium claim. The trial court later cut the punitive awards to roughly nine times each plaintiff's compensatory damages, bringing the judgment down to about $611 million, and the Missouri appellate courts left that judgment standing.
Gray Ritter Graham's Don Downing served as court-appointed co-lead counsel in a massive multidistrict lawsuit against Bayer CropScience over the 2006 contamination of the U.S. long-grain rice supply by an unapproved genetically modified strain, producing a $750 million settlement for more than 11,000 rice farmers across five Southern states.
A St. Louis County jury returned a $745 million verdict against nitrous oxide distributor United Brands and local head shop Coughing Cardinal after finding the companies conspired to sell Whip-It! canisters as an inhalant to a driver who passed out behind the wheel and fatally struck 25-year-old Marissa Politte outside her workplace.
A St. Louis jury awarded $495 million against Abbott Laboratories after finding the company failed to warn that its Similac cow's milk formula could cause necrotizing enterocolitis in premature infants.
Don Downing chaired the court-appointed Plaintiffs' Executive Committee in the federal dicamba MDL and negotiated a $400 million settlement with Monsanto/Bayer covering yield losses suffered by soybean farmers across the country from 2015 through 2020.
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 Kansas City jury awarded ovarian cancer patient Georgia Hayes $225 million in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages against pharmacist Robert Courtney, who had diluted chemotherapy drugs for profit. The trial judge later reduced the award to roughly $330 million, and Hayes collected almost nothing from Courtney himself, whose assets had been seized by the federal government. Courtney was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison, and drug makers Eli Lilly and Bristol-Myers Squibb later paid $71 million to settle victims' claims.
A St. Charles County judge entered a $300 million bench-trial judgment for a child, identified only as G.T., who was physically and sexually abused between the ages of three and five while in the care of Susan and James McLaurie, though one defendant died before the suit was filed and the only known insurance was a $303,000 policy.
A St. Charles County jury awarded $247.3 million to six women sexually assaulted by an unlicensed massage therapist at Oasis Foot Spa & Massage in St. Peters, finding the spa and its owner liable for hiring him without any background check and ignoring an early complaint. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in full in 2024.
A St. Louis jury awarded $28 million in compensatory damages and $149 million in punitive damages to Shannon Dugan, a New Jersey sheriff's deputy who was sexually assaulted by a Hyatt security guard who used his master key to enter her hotel room while she slept. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the full award in December 2024.
A St. Louis jury found trailer manufacturer Wabash National 65 percent at fault and awarded $462 million, most of it punitive, after a defective rear underride guard let a car slide beneath a trailer and kill two young fathers; a judge later cut the total to about $119.5 million.
A St. Louis jury awarded $462 million against trailer maker Wabash National after its defective rear-impact guard failed and allowed a car to slide beneath a trailer on I-55, killing Taron Tailor, 30, and Nicholas Perkins, 23, in 2019.
A four-day trial ended with a $109.2 million verdict against LaFarge North America after Simon Law proved the supplier knowingly sold Gleeson Asphalt base rock that did not meet the grade it was labeled and paid for.
A Jackson County jury returned a $108.6 million verdict for the parents of a woman who died from sepsis after her husband's religious group prevented her from receiving medical care during a botched home birth.
A St. Louis jury awarded $105 million to tire technician Randy Dorman after a Bridgestone/Firestone RH5 multi-piece truck wheel explosively separated during inflation, fracturing his face, both arms, and wrist, while internal company documents showed Firestone engineers had tracked nearly 100 similar incidents for decades.
A Callaway County jury awarded Beth Mayhew and her husband $82.3 million after a truck driver hit their vehicle on I-70 while driving with both feet on the dashboard and holding an iPad to watch videos.
Two former Jackson County Courthouse employees sued U.S. Engineering Co. and Jackson County over asbestos dust that spread through the courthouse during a mid-1980s renovation, after a co-worker died of mesothelioma. A trial judge refused to certify a class, and in March 2015 the Missouri Court of Appeals reversed that ruling and reinstated the case. A jury had been selected for an October 2016 trial in Jackson County Circuit Court when the parties settled for $80 million, funded by U.S. Engineering's insurers rather than county tax dollars. The settlement set aside $25 million for attorneys' fees and litigation costs and put the remainder into a medical monitoring fund covering diagnostic testing for up to 7,500 people who worked in or spent significant time in the courthouse. Louis C. Accurso represented the plaintiffs.
A Clay County, Missouri jury awarded $76 million to the family of David Ford, a 48-year-old delivery driver crushed by moving machinery while dropping off vehicle seats at Ford Motor Company's Kansas City Assembly Plant. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict in full in 2019.
A St. Charles County jury awarded $75 million, including $25 million in punitive damages, to the parents of Krystofer Batsell, a 21-year-old killed when a driver fleeing police at more than 100 mph crashed into his car. The defendant is serving a 15-year prison sentence for second-degree murder, and the judgment is effectively uncollectable.
A Platte County jury returned a record $70 million verdict after an eight-year-old boy died and his six-year-old sister was seriously injured when a distracted driver rear-ended their grandparents' car in a highway construction zone.
A Clay County, Missouri jury awarded $65 million to a child who suffered a permanent brain injury before birth when a UPS delivery truck struck his mother's car while she was 13 weeks pregnant. With prejudgment interest, the judgment came to roughly $75.3 million, and the Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed it in May 2025.
A Monroe County jury awarded $58.6 million, including $56.6 million in punitive damages, to James Graham, a Hannibal food plant worker who developed the irreversible lung disease bronchiolitis obliterans after years of exposure to Givaudan butter flavoring chemicals. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in full in April 2026.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.