Top Oregon Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements

A federal jury in Portland awarded $85 million to 12 Oregon Army National Guard soldiers after finding that contractor KBR knowingly exposed them to a carcinogenic chemical at an Iraqi water treatment plant and then lied about the danger.

John Coletti and co-counsel won a $49 million jury verdict on behalf of seven survivors of PacifiCorp's 2020 Labor Day wildfires, the fourth trial in the ongoing class litigation in Multnomah County Circuit Court.

A Portland jury awarded $34.2 million to Richard Long, a former Swan Island shipyard laborer diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, after hearing that John Crane Inc. knew its asbestos gaskets and packing were dangerous decades before it warned anyone who worked with them.

A federal jury in Pendleton held two trucking companies and their drivers responsible for a 90-mile road-rage chase that ended in a fatal head-on crash, returning a $26.5 million verdict that survived the defendants' appeal intact.

William Coultas, the copilot who survived a 2008 helicopter crash that killed nine people on the Iron Complex fire in Northern California, sued General Electric over the engine's fuel control unit after suffering severe burns. A Multnomah County jury in Portland found GE 57 percent at fault on March 27, 2012 and awarded $42,000,000 to Coultas and his wife as part of a $70,455,000 verdict that also compensated the pilot's estate. Because Oregon makes defendants severally liable for their own share of fault, the couple's judgment was entered at $23,940,000. GE said it would appeal, and court records show the judgment was still on appeal in August 2013. A later federal opinion states the plaintiffs ultimately settled with all of the defendants.

A Multnomah County jury found a property management company and a private security firm liable after one of the firm's unlicensed armed guards shot and killed Freddy Nelson Jr. in a Lowe's parking lot, returning $21.25 million to his family.

A Multnomah County court awarded $20 million after a drugged driver killed 23-year-old Grant Fisher on Highway 26; the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled the state's $500,000 noneconomic damages cap unconstitutional as applied, restoring the full award.

Scott Busch was crossing a Portland crosswalk with the right-of-way when a McInnis Waste Systems garbage truck struck him and severed his leg; a jury awarded $13.5 million, and the Oregon Supreme Court struck down the state's $500,000 noneconomic damages cap as applied to his case.

A Multnomah County jury awarded Gabriel B. Owens $11.4 million after he struck a wooden signpost placed in the middle of Mt. Hood Ski Bowl's Cannonball mountain bike trail and was paralyzed from the waist down; the resort agreed to pay $10.5 million rather than pursue a threatened appeal.

The parents of Madaline Pitkin, who died in the Washington County Jail in Hillsboro, Oregon in 2014 while going through untreated heroin withdrawal, recovered a $10 million settlement from Washington County and its jail medical contractor, Corizon Health, after a federal judge approved the deal in December 2018.

A Multnomah County jury awarded $24.6 million to the estate of Erric Edward Gilbert, a 43-year-old Portland man who died in November 2018, days after suffering respiratory arrest during a routine colonoscopy at The Portland Clinic.

A Marion County, Oregon jury in November 2019 awarded $7 million to the family of Nicholas Gamalski, a 27-year-old powerline worker who fell about 100 feet to his death when a helicopter long-line rope severed in Louisiana in 2017. The helicopter operator, Winco Powerline Services, admitted fault and contested only damages. The award was $3 million to his estate and $4 million to his parents. Because the deaths happened in Louisiana, that state's law governed and no cap on noneconomic damages applied.

John Coletti won a multimillion-dollar jury verdict against I-Flow Corporation after the company's intra-articular pain pump destroyed Matthew Beale's shoulder cartilage following routine arthroscopic surgery, in what trial watchers tracked as the first verdict of its kind against a pain-pump manufacturer.

A Multnomah County jury found the Oregon Department of Human Services liable for a child's catastrophic brain injury after a hospital's hotline report of suspected abuse was mishandled and the child was returned home, where he suffered suboxone poisoning and severe abuse nine days later, awarding $29 million that Oregon's tort claims cap reduces to $4.2 million.

Bryan Dawson secured a $3 million settlement for the estate of Michael Barton, a mentally ill Oregon State Penitentiary inmate whose untreated influenza escalated to sepsis and death in February 2018, marking the largest settlement in Oregon Department of Corrections history.

A Multnomah County jury awarded $10 million to John Douglas Cox, a Clark County diesel mechanic left partially paralyzed after emergency physicians at PeaceHealth Southwest canceled a needed MRI, ordered the wrong imaging, and let him wait nearly 17 hours while a spinal epidural abscess compressed his spinal cord.

In 2012, a federal jury in Portland found General Electric responsible for a defective helicopter engine component in the 2008 crash that killed veteran firefighting pilot Roark Schwanenberg during the Iron 44 wildfire response. The jury awarded his estate $28,455,000 and put 57 percent of the fault on GE. A related Massachusetts court opinion recites that Oregon's wrongful-death damages cap and the jury's fault allocation cut that award to $1,329,350, and that the reduced judgment was on appeal. Oregon lawmakers later cited this same case while pushing to raise the state's wrongful-death cap.

An arbitration panel ordered Safeco to pay more than $1.2 million to Canby teenager Connor Zieg after a driver with a .285 blood alcohol level fell asleep, drove onto the sidewalk, and ran him over, though a policy cap held his actual recovery to $500,000.

A Wasco County jury found Mid-Columbia Medical Center negligent for keeping anesthesiologist Frederick Field on staff despite years of complaints, awarding $950,000 including punitive damages to a patient he assaulted while she was sedated.

After GEICO refused to pay PIP medical benefits to a driver operating an insured vehicle with the owner's permission, Travis Mayor won a Court of Appeals reversal that forced the insurer to pay $61,187 in benefits, fees, costs, and interest.