Top Premises Liability Personal Injury Settlements
The largest personal injury settlements for premises liability cases for one client or family, ranked by amount. Each links to the full story, the firm, and the record behind the number.
- $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 → - $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.
- $60.7 millionSettlementOH
$60.7 Million Settlement for Child Left with Brain Injury After Touching Downed FirstEnergy Power Line
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.
- $47.5 millionSettlementCA
$47.5 Million Settlement for Boy Crushed by Rotten Tanoak at San Mateo County Campground
A 12-year-old's catastrophic injuries from a rotten campground tree produced a $47.5 million pretrial settlement against San Mateo County, PG&E, and their contractors, reportedly the largest single-plaintiff personal injury settlement in California history.
- $35 millionSettlementPaidIL
Violinist Dragged by Metra Train Recovers $35 Million After Her Leg Was Lost in Closing Doors
In January 1995 a Metra commuter train pulled away from the Winnetka station with a 20-year-old violinist's case strap caught in the doors and dragged her about 366 feet, costing her a leg. A Cook County jury found the railroad and Metra at fault in 1999, and the verdict was affirmed on appeal in 2001. The railroads paid $35 million in March 2002, which included interest on the judgment.
After trial: The First District Appellate Court affirmed the 1999 verdict on September 14, 2001, and the railroads paid $35 million in March 2002, including interest on the judgment. The jury had assigned 4.5 percent of the fault to the plaintiff, which reduced the original award before interest.
- $28.5 millionSettlementCA
$28.5 Million Settlement for Special-Needs Boy Left Alone by School District
An 11-year-old with an IEP requiring door-to-door transport was abandoned at the school curb by district staff, struck by a car on a four-lane road, and left with permanent brain damage; the $28.5 million settlement against Victor Elementary School District was the largest pedestrian accident settlement in California in 2019.
- $27 millionSettlementMO
Mother of Kansas City Shooting Victim Recovers $27 Million From Commercial Property Owner
A woman sued a commercial property owner for wrongful death after her child was shot and killed on the property in Kansas City, alleging the landowner had failed to provide adequate security measures and precautions. The case was handled under a confidentiality agreement that keeps the parties' identities and the property's location out of the public record. It was resolved in Jackson County Circuit Court on May 31, 2024, under the caption Confidential v. Confidential, for $27,000,000. Missouri Lawyers Media, which reported the settlement and reached plaintiff's counsel for comment, later listed it as the top settlement in its Top Verdicts and Settlements roundup for 2024.
After trial: Case name, decedent and defendant withheld under a confidentiality agreement.
Ketchmark & McCreight, P.C.2024 · Jackson County Circuit Court, Missouri (case caption confidential)Read the full story → - $26 millionSettlementSC
$26 Million Settlement for Toddler Burned in Over-Chlorinated Resort Pool
Kenneth Berger secured a $26 million settlement for the family of a three-year-old who suffered severe chemical burns at Caribbean Resort and Villas in Myrtle Beach after a pool employee falsified chlorine records for years.
Kenneth Berger2024 · U.S. District Court, District of South Carolina (Horry County)Read the full story → - $21.5 millionSettlementWA
$21.5 Million Settlement for Jogger Mauled by Dogs King County Failed to Remove
King County paid its largest personal injury settlement on record after a 38-year-old mother of two was mauled by two dogs the county had repeatedly been warned about but failed to remove.
- $21.5 millionSettlementCA
$21.5 Million Settlement After Exposed Trolley Rail Left Man Paralyzed at San Diego Transit Station
David Long tripped on two inches of exposed trolley track left by construction grinding crews at the 12th and Imperial MTS station and suffered a spinal cord injury that left him quadriplegic; the case settled for $21.5 million.
Harris Personal Injury Lawyers, Inc.2015 · San Diego County Superior Court, Central Justice CenterRead the full story → - $18.5 millionSettlementCA
$18.5 Million Settlement for Boy Who Lost Leg When City Garbage Truck Made Dangerous Turn
San Diego agreed to pay $18.5 million, the largest settlement of its kind in city history, after a nine-year-old lost his left leg when a city garbage truck executed a dangerous multi-point turn through an intersection he was crossing on a skateboard.
- $18.5 millionSettlementIL
Movie Extra Wins $18.5 Million After Stunt Cable Shatters Skull on Transformers 3 Set
A Cook County judge approved an $18.5 million settlement for Gabriela Cedillo, a 24-year-old extra who suffered catastrophic brain damage when a snapped tow cable tore through her windshield during filming of Transformers: Dark of the Moon in Hammond, Indiana.
- $16.95 millionSettlementWA
Washington State Pays $16.95 Million to Survivors of Abuse at J Bar D Boys Ranch
Washington State agreed to pay $16.95 million to 12 former residents of the J Bar D Boys Ranch who were sexually and physically abused as children while in state custody during the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the settlement reached mid-trial after four weeks of testimony.
Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala (PCVA)2023 · Thurston County Superior Court, WashingtonRead the full story → - $16 millionSettlementFL
$16 Million Settlement for Woman Sexually Assaulted at Rodeway Inn While Hotel Security Watched
Justin Shapiro of Leesfield and Partners secured a $16 million settlement for a 67-year-old woman who was beaten and sexually assaulted in the open hallway of a northwest Miami-Dade Rodeway Inn while hotel employees and the property's security guard stood by and did nothing.
- $15.4 millionSettlementHI
State Pays $15.4 Million After Trail Sign Channeled Two Visitors Off a 300-Foot Cliff
A Kauai judge found Hawaii totally at fault after a state-posted warning sign at the left trail entrance near Opaeka'a Falls left the right-hand path, which ended at a sheer 300-foot cliff, completely unmarked, sending two visiting women to their deaths.
- $15 millionSettlementNJ
Girl Loses Two Toes in Macy's Escalator Trap, Family Recovers $15 Million from Macy's and ThyssenKrupp
A 10-year-old girl lost two toes and underwent 22 surgeries after her foot was pulled into a decades-old, poorly maintained Macy's escalator at Garden State Plaza in Paramus; three years later, Macy's and ThyssenKrupp Elevator settled for $15 million.
- $11.4 millionSettlementHI
$11.4 Million Settlement for Pedestrian Left Quadriplegic at Defective Waipio Uka Crosswalk
A 38-year-old man paralyzed at a Waipio crosswalk in April 2015 settled for $11.4 million after attorney Woodruff Soldner proved the City of Honolulu repaved the road in 2014 without completing the safety checklist its own laws required.
- $10.75 millionSettlementFL
$10.75 Million Settlement for Massachusetts Man Left Quadriplegic After Dive from Key West Resort Dock
Stuart Grossman secured a $10.75 million settlement for Bernard Barlow, a Massachusetts vacationer who broke his neck diving from the Galleon Resort's tiki bar deck in April 2015 after the tide receded and the resort posted no warnings.
- $10 millionSettlementWA
Cyclist Left Quadriplegic by a Hidden Trail Bollard Recovers $10 Million From King County
Davis Law Group won a $10 million settlement for Carl Schwartz, a retired hospital administrator left paralyzed when his bicycle struck an unmarked metal post on King County's Green River Trail.
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.