Top New Jersey Personal Injury Recoveries Confirmed Paid
Personal injury results in New Jersey 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 New Jersey →- $125 millionSettlementPaidPremises Liability
$125 Million Settlement for Lawyer Paralyzed by Falling Utility Pole at a Union City Bus Stop
A 43-year-old utility pole that Verizon had been told to remove in 1999 snapped and fell on attorney Maria Moser Meister at a Union City bus stop in 2017, leaving her with a severe brain injury and paralysis. In May 2020 a New Jersey judge approved a $125 million settlement, reported as the largest personal injury settlement in state history.
After trial: This was a pre-trial settlement, not a jury verdict. Verizon agreed to pay $125 million total, $118,275,000 to Maria Meister and $7 million to her husband, before the case went to trial, and an Essex County Superior Court judge approved it at a friendly hearing in May 2020.
Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman, LLC2020 · Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex CountyRead the full story → - $28 millionSettlementPaidWorkplace Injury
$28 Million Settlement for Electrician Burned Over 60 Percent of His Body in Newark Panel Explosion
Carlos Gomez was burned over 60 percent of his body when an electrical panel exploded while he worked in a Newark office building in 2019. His suit against IDT Corp. and other defendants settled for $28 million, approved by the Essex County Superior Court in February 2023 and ranked by the New Jersey Law Journal as the largest reported New Jersey personal injury settlement of the court's 2022-2023 term.
After trial: A court-approved settlement, so there is no appeal and no post-trial reduction. The agreement was reached in 2022 and approved in Essex County in February 2023.
- $25 millionVerdictReduced from $135 millionPaidCar Accidents
$135 Million Verdict for Girl Paralyzed by Drunk Fan Served at Giants Stadium
A Bergen County jury ordered stadium concessionaire Aramark and drunk driver Daniel Lanzaro to pay roughly $135 million after Lanzaro, served beer at Giants Stadium despite visible intoxication, crashed into the Verni family's car and left their two-year-old daughter paralyzed from the neck down. The verdict was reversed on appeal in 2006, and the case settled in 2008 for $25 million in cash and annuities.
After trial: The New Jersey Appellate Division reversed the verdict in August 2006. On remand the case settled in 2008 for $25 million in cash and annuities.
Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman, LLC2005 · Superior Court of New Jersey, Bergen CountyRead the full story → - $21 millionSettlementPaidWorkplace Injury
Paralyzed Electrical Apprentice Reaches $21 Million Settlement Over Newark Arena Fall
Nicholas Dephillips, a 21-year-old apprentice electrician, fell about 15 feet through a drop ceiling while installing wiring for a helipad atop Newark's Prudential Center in January 2019, fracturing his cervical spine and leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. He sued his employer, Mehl Electric, general contractor Phelps Construction Group, and the arena in Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex County. In September 2021, before trial, he settled with Mehl Electric and its insurance carriers for $21 million, a figure his attorney called the largest construction site accident settlement in New Jersey at the time. His claims against Phelps went to trial in 2025, where a jury apportioned Phelps 36 percent of the liability, adding to his overall recovery from the incident.
After trial: The $21 million is the September 2021 settlement with Mehl Electric only, and it is final. A jury later found total damages of $20,080,976 against the remaining defendants on March 14, 2025, for a further $7,229,151 recovery from Phelps.
- $19.2 millionSettlementPaidWrongful Death
$19.2 Million Settlement for Elizabeth Gas Explosion That Killed Three Members of One Family
A gas explosion at a converted multi-family house in Elizabeth, New Jersey on November 11, 2015 badly burned six members of the Henderson family and, over the following weeks and months, killed three of them. The family sued the gas utility and the property owner, alleging an improperly capped gas line caused the blast. On February 11, 2019, a Union County Superior Court judge approved a $19.2 million settlement, reached in mediation, apportioned among three estates and three surviving claimants.
After trial: This was a mediated settlement approved by the court, not a litigated verdict, and no appeal followed. The $19.2 million figure is the total recovery before the deduction of court-approved attorney fees, funeral expenses and Medicaid liens; the percentages above apply to the net amount after those deductions.
Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman, LLC2019 · Superior Court of New Jersey, Union CountyRead the full story → - $10.88 millionReduced from $19.1 millionPaidCivil Rights
Trooper Mistook Her Stroke for Drunk Driving, Jury Holds State Liable
Cheryl Rhines pulled onto the shoulder of Route 78 in Newark in October 2017 while having a stroke. A New Jersey State Police trooper with about two years on the job read her slurred speech, facial drooping and inability to stand as intoxication, arrested her, and had her taken to a State Police station instead of a hospital five minutes away, delaying treatment by roughly two and a half hours. An Essex County jury found the state liable in January 2025 and put her total damages at $19.1 million, then attributed 40% of her disability to the stroke itself. After that reduction and an adjustment for disability benefits she had already received, the judgment came to $10,882,432.20, and the trial judge refused to disturb it in April 2025. Dennis M. Donnelly represented Rhines, who has global aphasia and can no longer work.
After trial: Reduced and paid. The $19.1 million damages finding was cut by the 40 percent share attributed to the stroke itself and adjusted for disability benefits, giving a judgment of $10,882,432.20 (Daily Voice, February 2025).
The Donnelly Law Firm2025 · Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Essex County (Judge Thomas Vena; docket ESX-L-580-19)Read the full story → - $10.5 millionSettlementPaidMedical Malpractice
Twice-Missed Lung Infiltrate Leads to $10.5 Million Settlement Over New Jersey Lawyer's Death
Brian Coven, a transactional attorney who spent his entire career at Sills Cummis & Gross, went to Summit Medical Group with pneumonia symptoms in January 2019 and again in February 2020, and both chest X-rays showed a lung infiltrate that went unaddressed. He was not diagnosed with cancer until after later losing weight without explanation, and he died of the disease in 2024 at age 68. His estate sued Summit Medical Group and four of its physicians in Essex County, and the group agreed to pay $10.5 million on the physicians' behalf. David Mazie of Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman represented the estate.
After trial: This was a negotiated settlement, not a litigated verdict, and no appeal followed. New Jersey's lost-chance doctrine under Scafidi v.
Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman, LLC2026 · Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex CountyRead the full story → - $9.75 millionSettlementPaidWrongful Death
Family of Man Killed by Turnpike Guardrail Settles Claims for $9.75 Million
Patrick Sweeney, a 34-year-old computer salesman, was killed in August 2006 when the car service driving him to Newark Liberty International Airport lost control on the New Jersey Turnpike near the Route 80 interchange in Bergen County and struck a guardrail that pierced the passenger compartment. His widow, Kristin Sweeney, sued the contractor that built the guardrail, the engineering firms involved in its design and oversight, and the limousine company, arguing the guardrail had not been built to the specifications required by its design. Attorney Bruce Nagel represented the family. After a three-year fight the case settled in 2009 for a combined $9.75 million paid by four defendants, $4 million of it in a settlement with the contractor and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority. A separate, previously dismissed claim against the guardrail's end-terminal manufacturer, Trinity Highway Industries, was not part of the settlement.
After trial: The $9.75 million settlement with four defendants was negotiated, not a verdict, so no cap or remittitur applies, and it is treated as paid. A separate claim against the guardrail manufacturer was dismissed before trial, and a motion to reopen it has no reported outcome.
Nagel Rice, LLP2009 · Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Bergen CountyRead the full story → - $7.35 millionVerdictPaidWrongful Death
$7.35 Million Verdict for Laborer Paralyzed by Falling Ladder, Brain-Damaged by Delayed Intubation
Jack D'Avila, a concrete laborer on a scrap-metal shredder installation in Jersey City, was struck on the head by an unsecured 20-foot extension ladder on May 18, 2005, fractured his cervical spine, and two days later suffered an anoxic brain injury when his ICU surgeon did not intubate him before he went into respiratory distress. He spent three years on a ventilator and died in July 2008. After a four-month trial in Middlesex County, a jury found the site owner Hugo Neu, the installer Femco Machine Company, and trauma surgeon Patricia Schrader liable and awarded his estate, widow, and two children $7,346,363, entered as an $8.54 million judgment with interest. The Appellate Division affirmed the verdict and judgment in a published 2015 opinion, remanding only indemnification questions among the defendants.
After trial: Affirmed. The Appellate Division affirmed the verdict and judgment on August 10, 2015, and its remand concerned only fault allocation for indemnification and could not reduce the plaintiffs' recovery.
Blume Forte Fried Zerres & Molinari, P.C.2012 · Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Middlesex County, New BrunswickRead the full story → - $6.8 millionSettlementPaidMedical Malpractice
$6.8 Million Hospital Settlement After a Stillbirth at 31 Weeks and the Hysterectomy That Followed
Kristen Dondero was 31 weeks pregnant and under the care of a maternal-fetal specialist when Hackensack University Medical Center sent her home on September 6, 2018 with decreased fetal movement and early labor symptoms. She returned two days later and learned her son had died in utero; the delivery that followed tore her uterus and ended in an emergency hysterectomy, blood transfusions, and further surgery under an induced coma. After five years of litigation marked by the hospital's sworn denials that any internal review of her care existed, and an Appellate Division ruling that those denials could support a fraudulent concealment claim, HMH Hospitals Corp. agreed on July 1, 2025 to pay Kristen and Andrew Dondero $6.8 million. The case against the obstetrician and his practice continued.
After trial: The $6.8 million is the hospital's share only, agreed on July 1, 2025 on confidential terms, and no appeal is possible from a settlement. Claims against Dr.
Lomurro Munson LLC2025 · Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Bergen CountyRead the full story →
All New Jersey verdicts and settlements
64 results, largest first
After fifteen years of litigation and three failed bankruptcy maneuvers by Johnson and Johnson subsidiaries, Ashcraft and Gerel attorneys R. Bryant McCulley and Michelle Parfitt helped negotiate a global, uncapped settlement of at least $5.5 billion covering approximately 76,000 ovarian-cancer claims.
On Nov. 3, 2014, Howmedica Osteonics, doing business as Stryker Orthopaedics, settled the claims of about 3,000 people who had surgery to remove recalled Rejuvenate and ABG II modular hip stems. The deal was announced in the Bergen County courthouse and paired with a parallel proceeding in the federal MDL in Minnesota. It sets a base award per failed implant plus enhancements for complications, with no fixed fund, and was expected to pay out more than $1 billion. Thomas Anapol of Anapol Schwartz sat on the court-appointed Plaintiff Steering Committee for the New Jersey litigation.
An Essex County jury awarded $165.97 million against the State of New Jersey and its Division of Youth and Family Services for failing to remove an infant from his home despite his grandmother's abuse report, a verdict reported as the largest in state personal injury history. The trial judge cut it to $102.6 million on remittitur, and in April 2017 the Appellate Division reversed the judgment entirely on qualified immunity grounds under the Tort Claims Act. The family collected nothing from the State.
A 43-year-old utility pole that Verizon had been told to remove in 1999 snapped and fell on attorney Maria Moser Meister at a Union City bus stop in 2017, leaving her with a severe brain injury and paralysis. In May 2020 a New Jersey judge approved a $125 million settlement, reported as the largest personal injury settlement in state history.
Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg led the trial team that won a $117 million verdict for Stephen Lanzo III, the first jury finding that Johnson & Johnson talc caused a plaintiff's mesothelioma. The New Jersey Appellate Division reversed the judgment in April 2021 over inadmissible expert testimony, and no retrial or final resolution has been publicly reported since, with J&J's talc bankruptcy filings stalling the litigation for years.
Four construction workers were killed and more than 30 injured when five floors of a parking garage under construction at the Tropicana Casino Resort in Atlantic City collapsed in October 2003, leading to what attorneys described as the largest construction-accident settlement in U.S. history at that time.
In April 2018, the first New Jersey trial over C.R. Bard's pelvic mesh implants ended with a $68 million verdict for Mary McGinnis and her husband: $33 million in compensatory damages and $35 million in punitive damages. On July 25, 2023, the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed, holding that Bard was denied a fair trial because the jury never heard that the FDA had cleared the devices through the 510(k) process, and ordered a new trial on all issues. No retrial verdict or disclosed settlement has been publicly reported since.
An Essex County jury awarded $55 million to Angel May Rider, a young barista who lost both legs after a tractor trailer owned by Jersey City Transfer and Alert Motor Freight jackknifed on a rain-slicked stretch of I-95 and pinned her against a guardrail. Reported as the largest verdict in Essex County history, the award was affirmed in full by the New Jersey Appellate Division in May 2026.
In the first consolidated multi-plaintiff talc trial, a Middlesex County jury awarded $37.3 million on September 11, 2019 to four people who developed mesothelioma after their parents powdered them with Johnson's Baby Powder as children, and a second jury added $750 million in punitive damages in February 2020, which Judge Ana Viscomi cut to $186.5 million under New Jersey's five-times cap. Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg tried the case with Chris Placitella and Chris Panatier. On October 3, 2023 the Appellate Division reversed every judgment and ordered new trials, holding that the trial court had admitted three plaintiffs' experts without the gatekeeping New Jersey law requires.
A Bergen County jury awarded $30,312,204 in February 2008 to the family of Mark Buttitta, who died of mesothelioma at 50 after breathing asbestos fibers his father carried home from GM parts warehouses and after his own college summers working there. Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg tried the case, and the New Jersey Appellate Division affirmed the full award on April 5, 2010.
An Essex County jury awarded $30 million against Newark Public Schools and the City of Newark after finding both institutions failed to stop a school aide who sexually abused a student repeatedly from 1991 to 1995, beginning when the child was ten years old.
An Essex County jury awarded Sandra Szell $28.6 million after Kessler Institute aides mishandled a toilet-to-wheelchair transfer that fractured her spine and left her paralyzed from the chest down, though a confidential high-low agreement capped her actual recovery.
Carlos Gomez was burned over 60 percent of his body when an electrical panel exploded while he worked in a Newark office building in 2019. His suit against IDT Corp. and other defendants settled for $28 million, approved by the Essex County Superior Court in February 2023 and ranked by the New Jersey Law Journal as the largest reported New Jersey personal injury settlement of the court's 2022-2023 term.
A Bergen County jury ordered stadium concessionaire Aramark and drunk driver Daniel Lanzaro to pay roughly $135 million after Lanzaro, served beer at Giants Stadium despite visible intoxication, crashed into the Verni family's car and left their two-year-old daughter paralyzed from the neck down. The verdict was reversed on appeal in 2006, and the case settled in 2008 for $25 million in cash and annuities.
James McAlonan was left a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic after Mildred Tracy drove through a stop sign in Harrison Township, New Jersey, and his Toyota Echo struck the side of her Ford Explorer. The trial judge granted McAlonan judgment against Tracy on negligence and proximate cause, the jury cleared codefendant Toyota on a companion airbag design claim, and the jury awarded $30,514,352.25. Because McAlonan was not wearing his seatbelt, the jury assigned him 30 percent comparative fault, and the court molded the verdict to a $21,360,046.65 judgment against Tracy. The Appellate Division affirmed in 2011, rejecting McAlonan's appeal of the defense verdict for Toyota. Mati Jarve, now of Jarve Granato Starr, tried and argued the case for McAlonan.
Nicholas Dephillips, a 21-year-old apprentice electrician, fell about 15 feet through a drop ceiling while installing wiring for a helipad atop Newark's Prudential Center in January 2019, fracturing his cervical spine and leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. He sued his employer, Mehl Electric, general contractor Phelps Construction Group, and the arena in Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex County. In September 2021, before trial, he settled with Mehl Electric and its insurance carriers for $21 million, a figure his attorney called the largest construction site accident settlement in New Jersey at the time. His claims against Phelps went to trial in 2025, where a jury apportioned Phelps 36 percent of the liability, adding to his overall recovery from the incident.
A New Jersey court entered a $20 million judgment for Keziah Lewis, half of it punitive, against ride maker KMG for the 2017 Ohio State Fair Fire Ball failure that left her with catastrophic injuries.
When improperly installed scaffolding collapsed at a Bordentown, New Jersey construction site and injured four workers, John Ratkowitz of Ginarte Gonzalez and Winograd secured a $19.675 million multi-party settlement that awarded $15 million to Luis Yanza, who sustained a traumatic brain injury leaving him with permanent, severe cognitive deficits.
A gas explosion at a converted multi-family house in Elizabeth, New Jersey on November 11, 2015 badly burned six members of the Henderson family and, over the following weeks and months, killed three of them. The family sued the gas utility and the property owner, alleging an improperly capped gas line caused the blast. On February 11, 2019, a Union County Superior Court judge approved a $19.2 million settlement, reached in mediation, apportioned among three estates and three surviving claimants.
A pharmacist three months into her probationary period at a New Jersey hospital let a spinal-toxic chemotherapy drug mix into a leukemia patient's intrathecal dose during what was supposed to be his final treatment, leaving him permanently paralyzed from the waist down. A Middlesex County jury found the pharmacist at fault and held the hospital liable for her conduct, while clearing the oncologist who gave the injections. Jurors awarded the patient $18,564,000, including $17.5 million for pain and suffering. Defense counsel told the New Jersey Law Journal that a high-low agreement entered before trial would reduce what the patient actually recovers; the figure was not reported.
A Gloucester County jury awarded $45 million after finding that emergency room physicians missed a two-month-old's femur fracture and never reported it as suspected abuse, three weeks before the same infant suffered a catastrophic brain injury at his father's hands.
A Monmouth County jury awarded John Fiore $6.5 million in compensatory damages and $11.15 million in punitive damages after a drug-impaired Highlight Motor Freight driver caused a multivehicle crash on Route 440 in Perth Amboy that killed another motorist and left Fiore unable to work.
Daryl L. Zaslow of Eichen Crutchlow Zaslow settled a hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy birth injury case for $17,000,000, a portion of which purchased annuities that carry guaranteed payments of $18,502,301 and anticipated payments of $28,700,273. Judge James Den Uyl approved the terms on January 3, 2025.
A Monmouth County jury awarded $17 million in October 2017 to a Wall Township family whose seven-year-old daughter suffered permanent brain damage in 2008 after a pediatric pulmonologist removed her from a ventilator before she was weaned off sedation and no one confirmed she was breathing on her own. The case was tried by Paul A. Lauricella of McLaughlin & Lauricella, P.C., the firm whose lawyers joined Feldman Shepherd in 2024.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.