Largest New York Personal Injury Recoveries Confirmed Paid
Personal injury results in New York 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 York →- $55 millionVerdictReduced from $102.1 millionPaidWorkplace Injury
Manhattan Jury Awards $102.1 Million Against Live Nation for a Worker Whose Booth Was Hit by a Forklift at Jones Beach, and Even After Appellate Cuts the Case Set New York's Record for Pain and Suffering
A Manhattan jury awarded Mark Perez approximately $102.1 million against Live Nation Worldwide for the traumatic brain injury he suffered when a forklift struck the vendor booth he was building at the Jones Beach Theater, though the courts later cut the award sharply: the Appellate Division reduced pain and suffering to $20 million (still the largest such award ever sustained on appeal in New York), and court records show the case ultimately resolved for about $55 million including interest.
After trial: Reduced on appeal: the First Department cut pain and suffering to $20M in 2021; total recovery with interest was roughly $55M.
- $18.3 millionVerdictPaidCar Accidents
Federal Judge Rejects Race-Based Life Expectancy Tables in $18.3 Million Award for Staten Island Ferry Crash Victim
In October 2003, James McMillan was one of roughly 1,500 passengers on the Staten Island Ferry Andrew J. Barberi when it hit a maintenance pier at close to full speed after its solo pilot blacked out, a crash that killed 11 people and left McMillan a quadriplegic. Liability was already settled by the time his case reached trial, so Judge Jack B. Weinstein tried damages in the Eastern District of New York with an advisory jury, with Torgan & Cooper, P.C. (now Torgan Cooper + Aaron) representing McMillan. The City argued his future medical costs should be figured on race-based life expectancy statistics predicting a shorter life for a Black claimant; Weinstein refused, in the first federal ruling to hold that such statistics cannot be used to calculate damages. His own findings of fact, amended twice, fixed the award at $18.3 million, the largest of the cases brought against the City over the crash, and the City paid it.
After trial: Damages were tried to the court under federal maritime law with an advisory jury whose recommendation was not binding. Judge Weinstein's own findings of fact, amended in November and December 2008, fixed the award at $18.3 million, and that is the figure the court itself used when it later calculated counsel fees.
Torgan Cooper + Aaron, P.C.2008 · U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Brooklyn, NYRead the full story → - $13.6 millionVerdictReduced from $130 millionPaidMedical Malpractice
Third Trial Ends in $130 Million Birth Injury Verdict Against St. Charles Hospital
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.
After trial: Reduced post-trial and on appeal: pain and suffering set at $4.25M (143 AD3d 692, 2d Dept 2016); per the firm, resolved for $13.6M cash plus lifetime Medical Indemnity Fund coverage.
- $12 millionSettlementPaidCivil Rights
City of Rochester Settles Daniel Prude Wrongful Death Suit for $12 Million
Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old Rochester man in the middle of a mental health crisis, died in March 2020 after police officers put a spit hood over his head and held him face down on the pavement until he stopped breathing. The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide from asphyxia during restraint, though a state grand jury declined to indict the officers. Elliot D. Shields of Roth & Roth, LLP filed the family's federal civil rights suit against the City of Rochester in September 2020. On October 6, 2022, a federal judge approved a $12 million settlement, split evenly between pain-and-suffering and wrongful death claims, with the city admitting no liability.
After trial: A federal judge approved the settlement on October 6, 2022. It was funded by the City of Rochester as an institutional defendant, making it a collectable, paid result rather than an award against individual officers.
Roth & Roth, LLP2022 · U.S. District Court for the Western District of New YorkRead the full story → - $6 millionVerdictReduced from $62.1 millionPaidWorkplace Injury
Queens Jury's $62 Million Fall Verdict Settles for $6 Million During Appeal
A Queens County jury awarded Zeng Guang Lin, an immigrant construction worker who was 20 when he fell 20 feet from a roof at a Bronx job site, $62,060,086.27 on December 17, 2014 after finding property owner Hutch Realty Partners LLC and contractor Gamut Consulting Inc. liable under New York Labor Law for failing to provide him fall protection. Lin suffered a traumatic brain injury along with spinal fractures, rib fractures, a lacerated spleen, a renal hematoma, and lung contusions. Hutch Realty filed post-trial motions and appealed, and while both were pending the case settled for $6,000,000, against a judgment the defense firm on the appeal puts at $68 million. Benedict Morelli tried the case for Lin; trade-press coverage at the time identified his firm as the Morelli, Alters and Ratner Law Firm, the practice known today as Morelli Law Firm PLLC.
After trial: Hutch Realty Partners filed post-trial motions and appealed to the Appellate Division. Before either was resolved, the case settled for $6,000,000, per a case summary published by Kahana Feld, the defense firm on the appeal, which describes the judgment as $68 million at that point and also notes that the available insurance coverage on the defense side was limited well below the verdict, context for why a verdict of this size resolved for a fraction of it.
Morelli Law Firm PLLC2014 · Supreme Court, Queens County, New York (Index No. 24253/08)Read the full story → - $3 millionSettlementPaidMedical Malpractice
Family of Journalist Who Died Hours After Childbirth Settles Harlem Hospital Malpractice Case for $3 Million
Amy Lam, a 34-year-old journalist, died roughly 11 hours after giving birth at home in West Harlem on August 1, 2016, after she was taken to Harlem Hospital Center because her placenta had not been expelled. At least five physicians treated her over about 10 hours, she received more than 20 blood transfusions, and her aorta dissected and ruptured in the operating room, leaving her with no blood volume. Her family, represented by medical malpractice attorney Susan Karten, sued in 2017, naming Harlem Hospital, New York City Health + Hospitals and five physicians, including Dr. Thomas J. Byrne, who performed a hysterectomy on Lam in the hours before her death. Attorneys for the hospital wrote in court records that what happened to her was a rare and unforeseeable lethal event, while Karten and her experts argued that her life could have been saved had the doctors moved sooner to find the source of the bleeding. The case settled for $3 million in 2020, with New York City Health + Hospitals as the only settling defendant.
After trial: There was no trial and no appeal. The family sued in 2017 and the case settled in 2020 for $3 million, paid by New York City Health + Hospitals, the public benefit corporation that runs Harlem Hospital, so collection is not in question.
Susan M. Karten & Associates, LLP2020 · New York State Supreme Court, New York City, NYRead the full story → - $1.5 millionVerdictPaidCar Accidents
72-Year-Old Passenger Thrown From MTA Bus Wins $1.5 Million Verdict
A 72-year-old woman was thrown to the floor of a Queens city bus in April 2012 when the driver pulled away from the curb before she reached her seat, tearing the menisci in her knee and causing spinal and post-concussive injuries. A Supreme Court, Queens County jury found MTA Bus Co. negligent and awarded her $1,500,000 in past and future pain and suffering. The Appellate Division, Second Department affirmed both the liability finding and the damages award in full in 2018. Robert Miklos of Silberstein, Awad & Miklos, P.C. represented her at trial and on appeal.
After trial: MTA Bus Co. appealed both the liability finding and the damages award. The Appellate Division, Second Department affirmed the $1,500,000 judgment in full on July 11, 2018 (2018 NY Slip Op 05134), and no further appeal was found.
Silberstein & Miklos2015 · Supreme Court, Queens County, NY; affirmed, Appellate Division, Second Department (2018)Read the full story → - $1.35 millionSettlementPaidWorkplace Injury
Doctor Infected With HIV by Hospital Needle Settles Negligence Suit for $1.35 Million
Dr. Veronica Prego, a medical intern at Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, pricked her finger in January 1983 on a needle that had been used minutes earlier to draw blood from a patient with AIDS, and she later tested positive for HIV. She sued the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and two physicians in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn, saying the contaminated needle had been left in the patient's bedding instead of a disposal box. The hospital corporation denied negligence and its lawyer suggested at trial that Prego had drawn the blood herself. On the eve of summations in March 1990, after a nine-week trial, the corporation paid $1.35 million to settle, a figure Justice Aaron Bernstein disclosed only after the New York Post petitioned to lift a gag order. Susan Karten was one of the lawyers who tried the case for Prego.
After trial: The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation paid the $1.35 million settlement, and as part of it Prego discontinued the case against Dr. Fogel and Dr.
Susan M. Karten & Associates, LLP1990 · Supreme Court, Kings County (Brooklyn), NYRead the full story →
92 results, largest first
Sullivan Papain was among the firms representing New York State against Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, and Lorillard, securing a $25 billion recovery through the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement.
Anapol Weiss shareholder Kristen Gibbons Feden helped secure $1.6 billion in default verdicts for 104 women sexually abused as children by former Long Island pediatrician Stuart Copperman, one of the largest cumulative civil awards against a single individual in U.S. history.
Cohen & Malad attorneys Irwin Levin and Richard Shevitz served on the court-appointed plaintiffs executive committee that negotiated a $1.25 billion class action settlement with Credit Suisse, UBS, and Swiss Bank Corporation on behalf of Holocaust survivors and their heirs.
Hunter Shkolnik of Napoli Shkolnik represented Nassau County in negotiations that produced a $1.1 billion settlement with McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen, the three largest prescription drug distributors in the United States.
A Manhattan jury found in May 2019 that asbestos in Johnson's Baby Powder and Shower to Shower caused Donna Olson's pleural mesothelioma, awarding $25 million in compensatory damages and $300 million in punitive damages, the largest talc verdict in New York history. Jerome H. Block of Levy Konigsberg tried the case. The trial court cut the award to $120 million in November 2020, and on July 19, 2022 the Appellate Division, First Department reversed outright and directed judgment for Johnson & Johnson, holding that the plaintiffs' medical expert never gave a scientific expression of the minimum lifetime exposure needed to cause the disease.
After a Westchester jury found Metro-North 71% at fault for the 2015 Valhalla grade-crossing disaster, a settlement exceeding $182 million resolved the claims of roughly 30 victims and their families.
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.
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.
A New York County jury awarded $117 million to William Durbec and his wife Victoria in May 2025, the largest single-plaintiff asbestos verdict in New York State history, after Durbec developed pleural mesothelioma from asbestos-containing fireproofing he breathed during years of sheet metal work at the original World Trade Center.
An Erie County jury awarded $100 million to a woman sexually abused over four years beginning at age 12, the largest Child Victims Act verdict in New York State history.
A Nassau County jury awarded $96,906,004 to a woman who suffered catastrophic brain injuries at age 15 at an intersection the county had been warned about for years, making it the second-largest verdict in Nassau County history.
A Monroe County jury ordered former Rochester Catholic priest Foster Rogers to pay $95 million to a man he sexually assaulted in 1979, when the victim was 15 years old, in one of the largest Child Victims Act verdicts in New York history.
On February 13, 2004, a Bronx jury awarded $86,735,134 to Frank Miraglia, a 45 year old construction laborer who fell into a trench when an unsecured plank collapsed under him and was impaled on a steel rebar that severed his spinal cord, leaving him a paraplegic. Steven L. Hess, then of Simonson, Hess & Leibowitz, P.C., was trial counsel; the firm continues today as Hess & Leibowitz, PLLC. The honest frame: the trial judge reduced the award to $25,030,134, and in January 2007 the Appellate Division, First Department trimmed it further, sustaining $5 million for past pain and suffering, conditioning the future pain and suffering award on a reduction from $10 million to $5 million (a reduction Miraglia accepted by stipulation), and cutting future medical expenses to $8,056,222, which left the judgment at just under $20 million.
A Brooklyn federal jury awarded $81.7 million to Luisa Janssen Harger Da Silva, a Brazilian student who fainted onto the tracks at the Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center station in 2016 and lost her left arm and left leg, in the first US verdict holding a transit system liable for failing to install platform barriers, but the money is far from paid: the MTA says it will appeal, and its fully briefed motions to throw out the verdict entirely or order a new trial are still pending before Judge Frederic Block.
A Manhattan jury awarded $72.5 million on February 22, 2024 to Aurora Beauchamp, a stage 4 cancer patient who was struck in a Lower East Side crosswalk by an MTA bus and dragged roughly 20 feet before it came to rest on her legs, crushing her pelvis and paralyzing her left leg, in what was widely reported as potentially the largest pedestrian knockdown verdict against the MTA. The money has not been paid: the transit defendants appealed after judgment was entered in May 2025, the Appellate Division denied the Beauchamps' bid to fast-track the briefing in December 2025, and the appeal remains pending.
A Brooklyn jury found the NYC Transit Authority fully at fault after a track crew dropped a railroad tie onto cyclist Robert Liciaga, severing his spine, and returned $110,174,972.38.
After a routine lumbar epidural steroid injection left a Long Island man permanently paralyzed, Gair Gair Conason won a $60 million verdict for the client of attorney Marijo C. Adimey. It is believed to be the largest medical-malpractice award in Nassau County history.
M. Anderson Berry of Arnold Law Firm was among plaintiffs' counsel in a $60 million class action settlement against Morgan Stanley Smith Barney arising from two separate failures to secure customer data on decommissioned IT equipment, affecting approximately 15 million current and former clients.
After a methanol "rainbow" demonstration erupted into a fireball and burned 16-year-old Alonzo Yanes over more than 30 percent of his body, Gair Gair Conason won a $59.17 million verdict against the New York City Department of Education and his chemistry teacher.
A Manhattan jury awarded Mark Perez approximately $102.1 million against Live Nation Worldwide for the traumatic brain injury he suffered when a forklift struck the vendor booth he was building at the Jones Beach Theater, though the courts later cut the award sharply: the Appellate Division reduced pain and suffering to $20 million (still the largest such award ever sustained on appeal in New York), and court records show the case ultimately resolved for about $55 million including interest.
A Brooklyn jury found general contractor Mecca Contracting failed to protect Alan Moonsammy from a fall that left him paralyzed and awarded him $53.5 million.
When a shunt revision at New York Hospital failed and went unaddressed in 1990, Samuel Desiderio suffered catastrophic brain damage; a jury awarded roughly $50 million and New York's highest court upheld the structured judgment in full.
A Kings County jury awarded about $48 million to a Polish immigrant carpenter who was rendered quadriplegic when a temporary wooden staircase gave way at a Brooklyn renovation site, finding the building owner and general contractor liable under New York Labor Law. The trial court later conditioned the pain and suffering portion on a reduction.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.