Top Individual Premises Liability Verdicts and Settlements
The 20 largest individual personal injury results for premises liability cases on record here, ranked by amount: one client's, one family's, or one incident's recovery, never a pooled fund. Each links to the full story, the firm, and the record behind the number.
- $1.1 billionVerdictOn appealTX
$1.1 Billion Verdict for Child Left Brain-Damaged by Oil-Fortune Heir
A Dallas jury awarded $1.1 billion against a trust fund heir who beat a 2-year-old into a permanent vegetative state in 2021, a verdict the firm calls the largest child-assault award in U.S. history.
After trial: As of mid-2026 the trial court had not yet entered final judgment on the March 2026 verdict, and Brooks's own attorneys expected an appeal along with post-trial motions to reduce the award. Plaintiff's counsel said Brooks has the financial capacity to pay but predicted the family will likely settle for less before any appeal concludes.
- $1 billionVerdictNot collectableGA
$1 Billion Verdict for Rape Victim Assaulted by Unlicensed Armed Security Guard
A Clayton County jury awarded $1 billion to a woman who was raped at age 14 by an armed security guard her employer hired without verifying he was licensed to carry a weapon.
After trial: Largely uncollectable: the security company that was found liable had already been dissolved before the verdict.
Stewart Miller Simmons Trial Attorneys2018 · State Court of Clayton County, GeorgiaRead the full story → - $644.75 millionVerdictOn appealFL
Orange County Jury Awards $644.75 Million to Man Left Partially Paralyzed by Winter Park Bar Staircase Fall
A jury found the owners of the Park Social bar liable for a 2017 staircase fall that left a 57-year-old patron a partial quadriplegic, returning a $644,751,855 premises-liability verdict that the defendants have appealed to Florida's Sixth District Court of Appeal.
After trial: On appeal at Florida's Sixth District Court of Appeal (6D2026-1557) as of August 2026; judgment not yet collected.
- $241 millionVerdictReduced from $360 millionVA
$360 Million Verdict for Three Patients Abused by Cumberland Hospital Director
A Richmond Circuit Court jury awarded $360 million to three former adolescent patients who were sexually abused by Dr. Daniel Davidow, the medical director of Cumberland Hospital for Children, during what he called routine femoral pulse exams.
After trial: A judge reduced the September 2024 jury verdict from $360 million to just over $241 million. More than 40 plaintiffs in the broader Cumberland Hospital litigation reached a confidential settlement in August 2026, ending the six-year case.
- $198.2 millionVerdictNot collectableTX
$198.2 Million Verdict for Sexual Assault Survivor Kristene Chapa Against Attacker and Family Pharmacy
A San Patricio County jury awarded $198.2 million to Kristene Chapa, who was kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and shot in the head at a public park in 2012, with the verdict holding her convicted attacker, his father, and their family pharmacy jointly liable.
After trial: The verdict against David Strickland, who is serving life without parole for the underlying attack, is largely uncollectable; Kristene Chapa said after the verdict he "doesn't have a pot to piss in" and she likely will never collect from him. No appeal had been reported as of this recent 2026 verdict.
The Buzbee Law Firm2026 · San Patricio County District Court (Case No. S-17-5294CV-C), Judge Janna K. WhatleyRead the full story → - $180 millionVerdictReduced from $535 millionIL
$535 Million Verdict for Rape of 13-Year-Old Psychiatric Patient by Another Resident
A Champaign County jury returned a $535 million verdict, the largest known single-plaintiff verdict in Illinois history, against a psychiatric facility that failed to prevent the rape of a 13-year-old female patient by another adolescent resident.
After trial: The verdict was reduced to $180 million on post-trial motion, and the case then settled out of court.
- $160.5 millionVerdictNV
$160.5 Million Verdict, Then a Confidential Settlement, for a Brain Injury at the Cosmopolitan Nightclub
A Las Vegas jury awarded hedge fund manager David Moradi $160.5 million after Cosmopolitan security personnel beat him at the Marquee nightclub and left him with a traumatic brain injury, and a confidential settlement followed during deliberations on punitive damages.
After trial: Settled after the verdict: the jury returned $160.5 million in compensatory damages in April 2017, and the case settled on undisclosed terms that week while the jury was deliberating punitive damages. The settlement replaced the verdict, so what was paid is not public.
- $148 millionVerdictIL
Record $148 Million Verdict for Dancer Paralyzed by O'Hare Shelter Collapse
A Cook County jury awarded Tierney Darden $148 million after a 750-pound pedestrian shelter toppled onto her at O'Hare and severed her spine, a record the city later settled for $115 million.
After trial: Rather than appeal, the City of Chicago and its insurer settled with Darden for $115 million after challenging the $148 million verdict.
- $129 millionVerdictLA
$129 Million Verdict for 6-Year-Old Killed in School Parking Lot After Run Club Crossed the Carpool Lane
A 6-year-old girl was killed in the parking lot of a Slidell Catholic school. The school's after-school Run Club sent children as young as six along a route that crossed the afternoon carpool lane while cars were moving. Her 10-year-old brother watched it happen.
After trial: This is a verdict, not a recovery. Plaintiffs' counsel expected the school and its insurers to appeal, and no appellate opinion, JNOV or remittitur has been located.
Landry & Swarr, L.L.C.2024 · 22nd Judicial District Court, St. Tammany Parish, LA (Covington)Read the full story → - $125 millionSettlementPaidNJ
$125 Million Settlement for Lawyer Paralyzed by Falling Utility Pole at a Union City Bus Stop
A 43-year-old utility pole that Verizon had been told to remove in 1999 snapped and fell on attorney Maria Moser Meister at a Union City bus stop in 2017, leaving her with a severe brain injury and paralysis. In May 2020 a New Jersey judge approved a $125 million settlement, reported as the largest personal injury settlement in state history.
After trial: This was a pre-trial settlement, not a jury verdict. Verizon agreed to pay $125 million total, $118,275,000 to Maria Meister and $7 million to her husband, before the case went to trial, and an Essex County Superior Court judge approved it at a friendly hearing in May 2020.
Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman, LLC2020 · Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex CountyRead the full story → - $118 millionVerdictGA
Bibb County Jury Awards $118 Million Over the Videotaped Beating of a Disabled Man at a Georgia Care Home
A Bibb County State Court jury awarded $118 million, including $90 million in punitive damages, to Joseph Cason Jr. and his mother Betty Gill after surveillance video showed care home employees striking the severely disabled man at least 69 times. The December 2022 verdict against the Total Care defendants was the largest in the court's history.
After trial: Collection and post-trial outcomes are not publicly documented; the defendants are small local companies and individuals.
- $110.04 millionVerdictAR
$110 Million Verdict for an Infant Left With Skull Fractures at an Unlicensed Mena Daycare
On February 16, 2016 Daniel Ryals dropped his healthy 9-month-old son at Wendy Jo Strother's unlicensed in-home daycare in Mena, Arkansas. That afternoon Strother's daughter carried the baby into the local hospital with multiple skull fractures and bleeding in his brain. He is permanently blind and brain-damaged. Strother pleaded no contest to permitting child abuse and got probation. In November 2025 a Polk County jury awarded the family $110,000,000 plus $40,000 in punitive damages.
After trial: The jury returned $110.04 million on November 19, 2025. No post-trial motion, remittitur or appeal has been reported, and no insurance coverage or payment has been reported.
Gates Law Firm, PLLC and Gillispie Law Firm2025 · Polk County Circuit Court, Mena ARRead the full story → - $102.7 millionVerdictFL
$102.7 Million Verdict for Quadriplegic Shot Outside Tootsie's Cabaret
A Miami-Dade jury awarded $102.7 million against shopping center owner Report Investment Corporation for the shooting that left Sami Barrak a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic in the parking lot outside Tootsie's Cabaret, a negligent security verdict tried by Michael Haggard that settled about a week later for the $26 million in total available insurance limits.
After trial: Settled roughly a week after the verdict for the $26 million in total available insurance limits.
The Haggard Law Firm, P.A.2007 · Eleventh Judicial Circuit, Miami-Dade County, FloridaRead the full story → - $95.6 millionSettlementPA
The $227 Million Building Collapse Settlement and Mariya Plekan's $95.6 Million Award
After an unbraced brick wall toppled during a 2013 Center City demolition and crushed a Salvation Army store, Kline & Specter's Andrew J. Stern secured a $95.6 million award for survivor Mariya Plekan, the largest individual share of a record $227 million settlement.
- $91 millionSettlementIL
7-Eleven Pays $91 Million to Bensenville Man Who Lost Both Legs Outside Its Store
A suburban Chicago man who lost both legs above the knee when a car jumped the curb and pinned him against a Bensenville 7-Eleven secured a $91 million settlement, the largest pretrial personal injury recovery in Illinois history, after Power Rogers LLP showed the company had documented thousands of similar storefront crashes and still refused to install protective bollards.
- $85 millionVerdictPA
$85 Million Verdict for Penn Med Student Who Fell 18 Feet Into Open Center City Manhole
A Philadelphia jury awarded $85 million to a University of Pennsylvania medical student left disabled after falling 18 feet into an open Trigen Energy manhole at 19th and Walnut Streets, the largest personal injury verdict in the United States for 2008.
- $81.7 millionVerdictOn appealNY
$81.7 Million Verdict for a Tourist Who Lost an Arm and Leg Under a Subway Train, MTA Contesting
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.
After trial: MTA post-trial motions to overturn or reduce the verdict were fully briefed in mid-2026 and remain pending; the MTA says it will appeal. Nothing collected yet.
Roth & Roth, LLP2025 · U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn)Read the full story → - $76.7 millionVerdictMI
Oakland County Jury Awards Kroger HVAC Technician $76.7 Million After Refrigerant Line Cost Him Both Hands
An Oakland County jury found Kroger solely liable and awarded HVAC technician Brian Mierendorf and his wife $76.7 million after a failed R-22 refrigerant line at a Bloomfield Township store burned and destroyed most of both his hands.
- $69.7 millionVerdictReduced from $110.2 millionNY
Brooklyn Jury Awards Paralyzed Cyclist $110.17 Million Against NYC Transit
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.
After trial: Judgment was entered at $69.7 million after post-trial reductions; the appeal was decided in 2024.
- $63 millionVerdictDE
Delaware Jury Returns $63 Million Verdict Against Defrocked Priest and Parish in Landmark Clergy Abuse Case
A Kent County jury awarded John Vai $63 million against defrocked priest Francis DeLuca and St. Elizabeth's Parish in Wilmington after finding both liable for childhood sexual abuse that began in the 1960s, producing what victim advocates called the largest compensatory verdict in U.S. clergy abuse history and the first time an individual parish was held accountable.
All premises liability verdicts and settlements
297 results, largest first
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.
A Dallas jury awarded $1.1 billion against a trust fund heir who beat a 2-year-old into a permanent vegetative state in 2021, a verdict the firm calls the largest child-assault award in U.S. history.
A Clayton County jury awarded $1 billion to a woman who was raped at age 14 by an armed security guard her employer hired without verifying he was licensed to carry a weapon.
Joseph Bruno and Bruno & Bruno served as lead plaintiffs' counsel in a landmark class action brought by more than 8,000 Gentilly residents exposed to a butadiene tank-car fire in 1987, securing a jury verdict that included $2.5 billion in punitive damages against CSX Transportation alone, later reduced to $850 million on appeal and affirmed by Louisiana's Fourth Circuit.
Kevin Boyle of the firm served as one of three plaintiffs' co-lead counsel in the $800 million settlement with MGM Resorts for victims of the 2017 Route 91 Harvest festival mass shooting at Mandalay Bay.
A jury found the owners of the Park Social bar liable for a 2017 staircase fall that left a 57-year-old patron a partial quadriplegic, returning a $644,751,855 premises-liability verdict that the defendants have appealed to Florida's Sixth District Court of Appeal.
Hunter Shkolnik of Napoli Shkolnik served as court-appointed co-liaison counsel for individual plaintiffs in the consolidated federal Flint water litigation, which produced a $600 million settlement from the State of Michigan in 2020.
Acadia Healthcare agreed to pay $400 million to resolve three civil cases arising from its Desert Hills and Familyworks foster care program in New Mexico, where licensed foster parent Clarence Garcia sexually abused multiple children in his care.
A class action filed in 2002 on behalf of roughly 400,000 residents across six north Alabama counties ended in a court-approved $300 million cleanup settlement requiring 3M and co-defendants to remediate PFAS contamination throughout the Tennessee River watershed.
A Richmond Circuit Court jury awarded $360 million to three former adolescent patients who were sexually abused by Dr. Daniel Davidow, the medical director of Cumberland Hospital for Children, during what he called routine femoral pulse exams.
Representing more clergy abuse survivors in the Archdiocese of New Orleans bankruptcy than any other firm, Herman, Katz, Gisleson and Cain helped push a five-year Chapter 11 proceeding to a $230 million settlement confirmed in December 2025, with additional recovery against Travelers Insurance still pending.
A Pennsylvania-record $227 million settlement resolved claims brought by 19 victims of the June 2013 Center City building collapse, in which an improperly braced wall fell during demolition and crushed the adjoining Salvation Army thrift store, killing seven people.
A San Patricio County jury awarded $198.2 million to Kristene Chapa, who was kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and shot in the head at a public park in 2012, with the verdict holding her convicted attacker, his father, and their family pharmacy jointly liable.
A Champaign County jury returned a $535 million verdict, the largest known single-plaintiff verdict in Illinois history, against a psychiatric facility that failed to prevent the rape of a 13-year-old female patient by another adolescent resident.
Joseph Bruno served on the eight-member Plaintiffs' Legal Committee in a federal class action covering more than 17,000 people harmed when a corrosion failure triggered a catastrophic pre-dawn explosion at Shell's Norco, Louisiana refinery in May 1988, ultimately settling for nearly $172 million.
A Las Vegas jury awarded hedge fund manager David Moradi $160.5 million after Cosmopolitan security personnel beat him at the Marquee nightclub and left him with a traumatic brain injury, and a confidential settlement followed during deliberations on punitive damages.
A DeKalb County jury awarded $160 million to the families of Ewell Ynoa and Giovan Diaz, two young men shot and killed at a 2017 rap concert at the Masquerade venue in Underground Atlanta, finding Sony Music Holdings failed to protect patrons at the show.
A Cook County jury awarded Tierney Darden $148 million after a 750-pound pedestrian shelter toppled onto her at O'Hare and severed her spine, a record the city later settled for $115 million.
A DeKalb County State Court jury awarded $140 million on December 20, 2023 to the estate of George Hughes, a 63-year-old tenant who burned to death in a March 2017 fire at the Venetian Hills Apartments in southwest Atlanta, finding the landlord's fire safety failures caused his death, but the judgment did not stand: on October 31, 2025 the Georgia Court of Appeals vacated it, holding that the jury was wrongly instructed under general premises liability law in addition to Georgia's narrower landlord-tenant statute, and the case was remanded for a full retrial that remains pending.
A 6-year-old girl was killed in the parking lot of a Slidell Catholic school. The school's after-school Run Club sent children as young as six along a route that crossed the afternoon carpool lane while cars were moving. Her 10-year-old brother watched it happen.
A 43-year-old utility pole that Verizon had been told to remove in 1999 snapped and fell on attorney Maria Moser Meister at a Union City bus stop in 2017, leaving her with a severe brain injury and paralysis. In May 2020 a New Jersey judge approved a $125 million settlement, reported as the largest personal injury settlement in state history.
McGee Lerer Ogrin represented 14 of the 124 survivors whose claims were resolved in a $122.5 million settlement with the City of Santa Monica over decades of child sexual abuse by a PAL volunteer the city failed to stop.
A Bibb County State Court jury awarded $118 million, including $90 million in punitive damages, to Joseph Cason Jr. and his mother Betty Gill after surveillance video showed care home employees striking the severely disabled man at least 69 times. The December 2022 verdict against the Total Care defendants was the largest in the court's history.
On February 16, 2016 Daniel Ryals dropped his healthy 9-month-old son at Wendy Jo Strother's unlicensed in-home daycare in Mena, Arkansas. That afternoon Strother's daughter carried the baby into the local hospital with multiple skull fractures and bleeding in his brain. He is permanently blind and brain-damaged. Strother pleaded no contest to permitting child abuse and got probation. In November 2025 a Polk County jury awarded the family $110,000,000 plus $40,000 in punitive damages.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.