Largest North Dakota Personal Injury Verdicts Never Collected

Dr. Philip Gattuso, a 49-year-old Fargo dentist, was beaten to death with a hammer in his home in October 2009. His father-in-law, Gene Kirkpatrick, had paid a hit man $3,000 with $10,000 more promised, because he wanted custody of Gattuso's young daughter. Kirkpatrick is serving life without parole. In July 2013, after a bench trial on damages, Judge Lisa Fair McEvers entered a $9,656,139.50 wrongful-death judgment for the girl and the estate. Kirkpatrick says he cannot pay any of it.

A twelve-year-old girl died while in the care of a residential treatment facility in North Dakota. Her parents' federal civil rights action was dismissed by the district court, reinstated by the Eighth Circuit in 2022, and settled on remand for $2.9 million, reported as the largest known civil rights settlement in the state.

A jury found the owner of a downtown Fargo apartment building 85 percent at fault after a tenant was burned and overcome by smoke on March 14, 1997, when a metal roll-down fire door dropped across her hallway. Total damages were $2.935 million, and the landlord's share came to about $2.49 million. The North Dakota Supreme Court upheld the liability rulings in 2003 and removed interest on future damages.

Lacey Higdem, 19, was found hallucinating in the woods under the influence of methamphetamine and booked into the Rolette County Jail in Rolla, North Dakota on June 3, 2020. She died in her cell roughly nine hours later. Rolette County and two former correctional officers made a $2 million offer of judgment, which was accepted.

A North Dakota jury awarded Michael Davis $1.66 million after CHI St. Alexius Health Williston and Dr. David Keene failed to refer him to a kidney specialist for nearly two years, allowing IgA nephropathy to progress to total kidney failure and an eventual transplant.

In May 2022 a Williams County jury found that $5,012,500 would compensate Kyle Harris for injuries he suffered in a November 2011 explosion on a North Dakota oil rig operated by Oasis Petroleum, where he was working as an employee of Frontier Pressure Testing, LLC. The jury apportioned 15 percent of the fault to Oasis, 65 percent to Harris's employer, Frontier Pressure Testing, and 20 percent to Harris himself. Under North Dakota's several liability statute the district court reduced Oasis's obligation to a $751,800 principal judgment, then added prejudgment interest and costs for a total of $1,381,297.02. Oasis appealed only the costs award, arguing Harris was not a prevailing party because his own fault exceeded its 15 percent share, and the North Dakota Supreme Court affirmed the full judgment in 2024.

The parents of an eight-year-old boy killed in a November 1995 crash in West Fargo, North Dakota, sued the driver, his father and a second driver alleged to have been racing him. The driver admitted liability, and the jury awarded the parents $810,457.96 against him and found the second driver not negligent. The trial court refused to subtract the family's pretrial settlement with the father from the award, and the North Dakota Supreme Court affirmed in 1999.

A nine-person jury awarded $250,000 to a teenage girl who was sexually assaulted in a Fargo home after finding the homeowners 40% liable for failing to supervise the gathering of minors in their basement.