Largest North Carolina Group Settlements and Injury Recovery Funds

A Henderson County jury awarded $101 million to two masonry workers and one worker's wife after a 12-foot retaining wall, rebuilt under Hajoca's direction without an engineer or a permit, collapsed onto their crew.

A Franklin County jury returned $40 million against an intoxicated driver and the owner who let her drive, and the Court of Appeals affirmed every dollar in 2024 as the largest drunk driving verdict in state history.

Hoyt Tessener of Martin and Jones, joined by co-counsel Kent Emison, secured a $31 million settlement for a boy left paraplegic when a two-point rear lap belt in a 1999 Ford Escort jackknifed him during a crash, while other occupants of the same car came away with comparatively minor injuries.

North Carolina Lawyers Weekly reported that Meredith Hinton of Ricci Law Firm resolved a motor vehicle injury claim for $21 million in 2023, one of the larger auto settlements recorded in the state that year.

A Forsyth County jury awarded $16 million to a woman sexually assaulted in her Winston-Salem Residence Inn room after a hotel night clerk who had not been properly trained handed a visibly intoxicated stranger a keycard to her room.

A federal jury awarded $15.1 million to a quadriplegic railroad worker and his wife after a CSX train struck his vehicle at a blind crossing in 1985, making it the largest personal injury verdict in North Carolina history at the time, though the Fourth Circuit later vacated the judgment and remanded for retrial.

Lanier Law Group secured a $12.5 million settlement for 65 UNC School of the Arts alumni who alleged sexual abuse by faculty spanning from the late 1960s through the early 2010s.

Behzad "Al" Abedi was killed when stacked marble slabs fell on him at a Charlotte stone warehouse in 2019, and DeMayo Law Offices resolved his family's premises- and products-liability claims for $12 million.

Three people died and a child was seriously injured when a 20-year-old drove the wrong way on Interstate 85 after a night of underage drinking supplied by bars and a fraternity; Maginnis Howard's Shawn Howard helped secure an $8.62 million settlement against 18 of the 19 defendants one month before trial.

Farrin co-lead counsel Gary Jackson won an $8 million class settlement for roughly 6,500 residents forced from their homes by the 2022 ammonium nitrate fire at the Winston Weaver fertilizer plant, with a separate $4.5 million for affected businesses.

E. Spencer Parris and G. Christopher Olson of Martin and Jones secured a $7.52 million settlement for Dwayne Allen Dail, who spent 18 years in a North Carolina prison before DNA evidence identified the actual perpetrator and cleared his name.

Forest Horne secured a $7.5 million jury verdict for a retired CSX railroad worker whose decades of on-the-job asbestos exposure caused malignant mesothelioma, a verdict the North Carolina Court of Appeals unanimously upheld in 2006.

A jury awarded $6.13 million to the family of a 53-year-old man who died of a heart attack hours after CMC-Northeast discharged him, finding the hospital's reckless disregard of his safety eliminated the NC statutory noneconomic damages cap.

A construction worker in a marked Charlotte crosswalk was hit by a left-turning construction truck on August 29, 2022, and suffered a traumatic brain injury with multiple skull fractures. The defense blamed him for failing to keep a lookout, but reconstruction showed the truck at 18 mph with no braking. At a July 29, 2025 mediation the case resolved for $6 million, all available liability insurance limits.

A Johnston County jury awarded $5.1 million to the family of Joan Drake, killed when a driver going 98 mph struck her car as she turned into a Clayton Walmart, after Farrin attorneys Coleman Cowan and Donald Clack tried the case without putting on a single medical bill.

A North Carolina nursing home placed an 89-year-old man in a room with a resident it knew to be violent, and within three days the roommate beat him to death.

A 41-year-old ironworker left paraplegic when an elevated walkway overhang collapsed under him during a Raleigh mall demolition reached a $4 million confidential settlement with the general contractor.

A Union County jury found general contractor Bonterra Builders grossly negligent after a 46-year-old construction worker was fatally crushed when a trench wall collapsed beneath him, returning a $3.85 million compensatory verdict for his widow.

A Johnston County jury awarded $3.41 million to the estate of Clinton Massengill, a 23-year-old from Four Oaks who died nine days after being struck without warning at Club Riptide in Selma, falling and hitting his head on the concrete floor.

A commercial garbage truck driver ran a red light and struck a Charlotte resident's vehicle on November 30, 2022, causing fatal blunt force trauma; the estate recovered $3 million at the combined policy limits of the driver and waste company.

A Johnston County jury awarded $3 million to commercial truck driver Keave Bayes after a log fell on him at a logging deck, and John Paul Godwin of Hardison and Cochran, with co-counsel Sanford Thompson, secured the full verdict.

On May 8, 2021, a federal jury in Charlotte found former West Charlotte High School band director Duncan Gray and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools liable to a former male student for sexual harassment and assault, awarding $3 million against Gray and $7.5 million against the school system. The court later ordered a new damages trial on the school system's share, and that claim settled for an undisclosed amount in March 2022. The $3 million against Gray is the award that stood.

A commercial truck driver ran a stop sign on a North Carolina country road and killed a 60-year-old man, and his family settled their confidential wrongful-death claim for $3 million, a result that tied for 25th among the state's top verdicts and settlements of 2019.

A federal jury in Raleigh awarded $5.2 million for three residents who died at the Blue Ridge Health Care Center after its operators cut staffing and supplies, an award later limited to about $3 million once North Carolina's punitive cap was applied.