Largest New York Group Settlements and Injury Recovery Funds

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.