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 →- $33.1 millionVerdictReduced from $102.1 millionPaidWorkplace Injury
$102.1 Million Verdict Against Live Nation for a Worker Hit by a Forklift at Jones Beach
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: in 2021 the First Department cut past and future pain and suffering to $20 million, leaving about $33.1 million in compensatory damages, which is the figure ranked. With prejudgment interest the recovery came to roughly $55 million, and it was paid.
- $18.3 millionVerdictPaidCar Accidents
$18.3 Million Award for Staten Island Ferry Crash Victim as Judge Rejects Race-Based Life Tables
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: Paid. Judge Weinstein fixed the $18.3 million award in findings of fact amended in November and December 2008, after an advisory jury.
Torgan Cooper + Aaron, P.C.2008 · U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Brooklyn, NYRead the full story → - $16.86 millionVerdictReduced from $29.4 millionPaidMedical Malpractice
Appellate Court Restores Verdict After Hospital Delayed Diagnosis of Brain Bleed
A Kings County jury found New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation liable for the delayed diagnosis and treatment of a subdural hematoma in Carlyle Roberts, a 67-year-old brought to Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn after a hit-and-run crash, leaving him cognitively impaired, weak on his left side and dependent on others. The jury awarded $29,361,000, including $21,500,000 for pain and suffering, before the trial judge set the verdict aside and ordered a new trial over alleged misconduct in plaintiff's counsel's summation. The Appellate Division, Second Department reversed that order on February 24, 2021, reinstated the verdict, and separately found the pain and suffering award excessive, cutting it to $9,000,000. With the $7,861,000 future expense award left undisturbed, $16,861,000 stood. Silberstein, Awad & Miklos, P.C. (Robert A. Miklos) appeared for the plaintiff on the appeal, with Pollack, Pollack, Isaac & DeCicco, LLP (Brian J. Isaac) of counsel.
After trial: Reduced and reinstated. On February 24, 2021 the Appellate Division reinstated the verdict but found the $21,500,000 pain and suffering award excessive, ordering a new trial unless the plaintiff accepted $4,000,000 past and $5,000,000 future, and left the $7,861,000 future expense award standing.
Silberstein & Miklos2019 · Supreme Court, Kings County (Brooklyn), NY; Appellate Division, Second DepartmentRead the full story → - $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: Settlement approved by a federal judge on October 6, 2022 and funded by the City of Rochester, which denied liability. Because the case ended in a settlement, there was no judgment to appeal.
Roth & Roth, LLP2022 · U.S. District Court for the Western District of New YorkRead 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: Settled in 2020 for $3 million, paid by New York City Health + Hospitals, with no trial and no appeal. The individual physicians named in the complaint were not part of the settlement.
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: Affirmed. The Appellate Division, Second Department affirmed the $1,500,000 judgment in full on July 11, 2018, and no further appeal has been reported.
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 Prego discontinued the case against two doctors as part of it. No defendant acknowledged negligence.
Susan M. Karten & Associates, LLP1990 · Supreme Court, Kings County (Brooklyn), NYRead the full story → - $1.25 millionVerdictPaidPremises Liability
Broken JFK Escalator Traps Boy's Foot, Jury Returns $1.25 Million Verdict
On October 11, 1985, a nine-year-old boy's foot was trapped where broken comb sections left a gap at the top of an escalator in the Aer Lingus and Lufthansa arrivals area at John F. Kennedy Airport. The escalator kept running after his sneaker caught, and by the time the power was cut and he was freed, his right foot was crushed and permanently damaged. A federal jury found Aer Lingus Irish Airlines and Westinghouse Elevator Company, which maintained the escalator, responsible and returned a $1,250,000 verdict, $1,200,000 for pain and suffering and $50,000 for medical expenses; the claim against Lufthansa German Airlines was tried to the judge, who found that airline negligent as well. The court refused to set the pain and suffering award aside as excessive. Alan B. Leibowitz of the firm's predecessor, Simonson Hess & Leibowitz, P.C., was of counsel for the plaintiff.
After trial: Affirmed. The judge declined to set aside the jury's $1,200,000 pain and suffering award, so the $1,250,000 verdict stood in full.
Hess & Leibowitz, PLLC1987 · U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New YorkRead the full story → - $775,000VerdictReduced from $2.4 millionPaidPremises Liability
Bronx Jury Finds Landlords Liable for Courtyard Hole That Broke a Tenant's Ankle
Howard Menifield, 44, tripped in a hole in the paved courtyard of his Bronx apartment building in May 2011 and fractured and dislocated his right ankle. After a three-week trial in March 2018, a Bronx jury found the building's owners liable and assessed damages at $2,375,000. A high/low agreement made before the verdict set the recovery at $775,000, which Menifield received.
After trial: The jury assessed damages at $2,375,000, but a high/low agreement signed before the verdict set the recovery at its $775,000 maximum. The defendants were insured, and no appeal has been found.
123 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.
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.
Paul Napoli served as court-appointed co-liaison counsel for nearly 10,000 firefighters, police officers, and construction workers who developed respiratory diseases after working at Ground Zero, securing a settlement worth up to $712.5 million against the city and its contractors.
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.
A 565-foot crawler crane toppled across a Tribeca street in 2016, killing a young mathematician; the case settled for $272.5 million.
A Bronx jury in February 2016 awarded $183 million to five FDNY firefighters and the families of those killed after the city was found 80% liable for removing personal safety ropes years before a 2005 Bronx tenement fire that forced six firefighters to jump from a fourth-floor window.
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 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.
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.
In an opinion dated May 7, 2003, Judge Harold Baer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a default judgment of approximately $104 million against the Republic of Iraq, al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in consolidated wrongful death suits brought for two men killed in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. James E. Beasley of The Beasley Firm represented the estates of George Eric Smith, who worked in the South Tower, and Timothy Soulas, who worked in the North Tower; the Second Circuit's opinion in the collection appeal names him as counsel of record. None of the defendants appeared, so the court held a two day inquest on damages, found on expert testimony that Iraq had provided material support to al Qaeda, and held Iraq responsible for approximately $63.5 million of the total. The opinion itemizes the award by estate, by component and by defendant, and no source states a single total for either estate. Two collection efforts have failed, the last of them in the Second Circuit in August 2025, and no source found shows the judgment was ever paid.
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.
A Manhattan jury awarded $85 million to a writer and former New York Times columnist who was severely injured by a double-decker sightseeing bus while lawfully crossing the street.
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.
On September 28, 2017, a Manhattan jury awarded Morgan Wang $71 million against Neil Sexton, the driver who fell asleep at the wheel on state Route 79 in August 2012 on the way to Cornell University. Wang, a passenger, suffered a fractured back and a spinal cord injury. The award was $5 million for past pain and suffering, $6 million for future pain and suffering and $60 million for future medical care.
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.
An Erie County jury awarded $65 million to a woman who was sexually abused over seven years as a child by former Buffalo YMCA counselor James B. Jackson, in one of the largest verdicts under New York's Child Victims Act.
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 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.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.