Largest New Jersey Personal Injury Verdicts Never Collected

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.

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.

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.

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 Middlesex County jury awarded $39 million on February 1, 2019 to Hussein Agiz, who was 18 when a drag racing car struck his motorcycle inside the Heller Industrial Parks complex in Edison, costing him his right arm and right leg. Jurors had earlier found Heller 40 percent at fault for tolerating years of documented drag racing on its property. The case later settled on appeal for an undisclosed amount.

An Atlantic County jury awarded $37,548,096 to a 16-year-old with hemiplegic cerebral palsy, finding that an obstetrician and two labor and delivery nurses at Shore Memorial Hospital mismanaged Pitocin during his 2008 birth and caused a stroke that injured his brain.

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.

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 Middlesex County jury awarded $25 million (reduced by court cap to $12 million) in the first Child Victims Act case brought to trial against the State of New Jersey, finding the state 99% liable for failing to protect a girl from sexual abuse across three foster placements.

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.

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 boy born at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in 1998 developed cerebral palsy after doctors waited too long to perform a cesarean section despite clear signs of fetal distress. In April 2010, an Essex County jury awarded $18.5 million, and the family recovered $16.75 million under a high-low agreement reached during deliberations.

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.

A Bergen County jury awarded Elizabeth Hrymoc $15 million in December 2017 after finding that Johnson & Johnson's Ethicon subsidiary sold her a defective Prolift pelvic mesh device and failed to warn her of its risks, leaving her with chronic pain and unrelieved incontinence. The New Jersey Appellate Division vacated the verdict in March 2021, holding that the trial court's exclusion of FDA 510(k) clearance evidence denied Ethicon a fair trial, and ordered a new trial. Hrymoc settled her claim on undisclosed terms before the New Jersey Supreme Court took up the underlying evidentiary question in a companion case in 2023, so no independently verified final figure replaces the vacated $15 million.

In February 2013, a jury in the Superior Court of New Jersey in Atlantic City awarded Linda Gross, a registered nurse from Watertown, South Dakota, and her husband Jeffrey $3.35 million in compensatory damages after finding that Ethicon, Inc. and its parent Johnson & Johnson failed to give her implanting surgeon adequate warnings about the Gynecare Prolift vaginal mesh device and made a fraudulent misrepresentation to Gross herself. Days later, the same jury added $7.76 million in punitive damages, bringing the verdict to $11.1 million. Gross had gone through 18 operations to repair the damage after the Prolift was implanted in July 2006. Ethicon and Johnson & Johnson appealed, but the New Jersey Appellate Division affirmed the verdict in March 2016, and the New Jersey Supreme Court denied certification that December, making the $11.1 million verdict final.