Largest Ohio Personal Injury Verdicts Never Collected

Ellen Relkin served as court-appointed co-lead plaintiffs counsel in the DePuy ASR hip implant MDL, helping negotiate a $2.5 billion settlement for roughly 8,000 patients who required revision surgery after the metal-on-metal device failed.

After nearly 30 years of litigation, Markovits Stock and DeMarco secured a $742 million-plus-interest settlement for approximately 23,000 Navistar retirees whose healthcare and life insurance benefits had been repeatedly reduced.

Cory Watson's Jon Conlin, a co-lead lawyer on the plaintiffs' steering committee, helped drive DuPont and Chemours to a $670.7 million global settlement resolving about 3,550 C-8 water-contamination cancer and injury claims.

A federal jury found CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart liable for creating an opioid public nuisance in northeast Ohio, leading to a $650 million abatement judgment, the first of its kind against pharmacy chains in U.S. history.

After a six-week federal trial, a jury found three of the nation's largest retail pharmacy chains created a public nuisance by flooding Lake and Trumbull Counties, Ohio with opioid pills, and a judge ordered $650 million to fund a 15-year abatement plan.

A federal jury in Columbus assessed $787 million in damages against Moash Enterprise Company Limited, the Vietnamese manufacturer of a bunk bed that killed a two-year-old boy, after the company was defaulted for never appearing in the case. The court later cut the award to $615 million under Ohio's punitive damages cap, and nothing in the record shows the judgment has been collected.

Hours before opening arguments in the first federal opioid bellwether trial, Cuyahoga and Summit counties in Ohio secured a $260 million settlement from distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson, plus manufacturer Teva.

A Cuyahoga County jury awarded $134 million to a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and the Ohio Supreme Court later struck down a statutory damages cap as unconstitutional when applied to child victims of intentional criminal acts.

Ohio State University agreed to pay $100 million to 279 of 280 remaining plaintiffs who sued the university over decades of sexual abuse by former team physician Dr. Richard Strauss; Estey and Bomberger was among co-counsel firms representing survivors.

A Jefferson County jury awarded $82,105,345.70 to Michael Shank, a motorcyclist whose left arm and left leg were amputated after a commercial truck struck him near Steubenville. The verdict is reported as the largest trucking verdict in Ohio history, in a case the defense had offered $350,000 to settle.

A 12-year-old Cleveland girl suffered a profound brain injury and partial limb loss after touching an energized, downed Cleveland Electric Illuminating power line that had been left unrepaired for days following Hurricane Sandy; her family settled all claims for $60.7 million, the largest individual personal injury settlement in Ohio history.

A federal jury in Columbus found that DuPont's C-8 contamination caused Travis Abbott's testicular cancer and awarded him and his wife $50 million. After the trial court applied Ohio's cap on his wife's loss-of-consortium damages, the enforceable judgment came to about $40.3 million, which the Sixth Circuit later affirmed.

A Franklin County jury awarded $44.5 million to a southeastern Ohio boy left with locked-in syndrome after Athens Medical Laboratory took six days to report markedly abnormal STAT blood tests, and the trial court then refused to apply Ohio's noneconomic damages cap, holding it unconstitutional as applied.

A Cuyahoga County jury awarded a combined $42.4 million in October 2014 to Joshua Rojas ($34.6 million) and Kiara Torres ($7.8 million), two teenage passengers who suffered brain injuries when the car they were riding in collided with a Concrete Designs Inc. dump truck; Andy Young, now of The Law Firm for Truck Safety, served as trial counsel, and in 2019 Ohio's Eighth District affirmed the verdicts while vacating a later prejudgment interest award.

David Paris and Kathleen St. John won Ohio Supreme Court certification of a 1.4-million-member class and secured a $31 million court-approved settlement after proving State Farm concealed a 1994 high-court ruling that would have entitled policyholders to enhanced uninsured-motorist coverage.

A Montgomery County jury awarded the Stanziano family $30,953,181 in July 2009 after finding Miami Valley Hospital negligent in a birth injury case, reportedly the largest medical malpractice verdict in Ohio at the time. The parties then reached a confidential settlement before the punitive damages phase, so the amount actually paid was less than the verdict.

A Hamilton County jury returned a verdict of nearly $28 million against Utilimap Corp. after the firm's inspectors skipped a rotted utility pole that collapsed and killed Duke Energy lineman Keith Jester in 2014.

A Franklin County jury awarded $27 million to the estate of Gregory Coleman Jr., a 37-year-old bartender beaten to death by security workers outside the Julep bar in Columbus's Short North, finding the bar's ownership 80 percent at fault for negligent hiring and supervision.

A Trumbull County jury awarded $26 million to the estate of Stephen Tate, a blind, brain-injured resident of Signature HealthCARE of Warren who aspirated while eating lunch unsupervised and died after staff waited about 42 minutes to call an ambulance. The award, reported as the largest nursing home verdict in Ohio history, was won by Michael A. Hill, then of Eadie Hill Trial Lawyers and now of Michael Hill Trial Law.

A Hamilton County jury found freight brokerage Total Quality Logistics responsible for the death of an employee's newborn daughter after the company refused the mother's request to work from home during a high-risk pregnancy, apportioning 90 percent of a $25 million compensatory award to TQL.

A Cuyahoga County jury awarded $14.5 million to a boy born at 25 weeks with cerebral palsy and developmental delays after MetroHealth Medical Center's staff refused his mother's repeated requests for a C-section and watched the baby's condition deteriorate for more than three hours before performing an emergency delivery.

A Columbus federal jury awarded Kenneth Vigneron Sr. $2 million in compensatory and $10.5 million in punitive damages after finding DuPont's C-8 contamination caused his testicular cancer.

A Cuyahoga County jury awarded $39 million to the widow of a highway paving inspector struck and killed on Interstate 271 after the paving contractor failed to follow its court-approved safety plan.

A Summit County jury awarded $11.35 million to a family whose son sustained permanent brain damage after their obstetrician used forceps rather than performing a cesarean section, and the verdict survived four years of appeals.