Rhode Island Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements

A federal judge in Rhode Island found that a federally funded Providence health center spent nearly seven years calling a mother of four's headaches migraines before a brain tumor was found, and on December 9, 2024 entered judgment of $11,885,494.62 under the Federal Tort Claims Act, $8,385,494.62 of it to the injured woman and $3,500,000 to her four children. The tumor turned up only after she lost consciousness in the clinic's parking lot in 2019, and she suffered strokes during the surgery to remove it. The United States appealed. On March 27, 2026 the First Circuit affirmed her pain-and-suffering awards, modified her medical expense award down by $3,600, reversed the children's loss-of-consortium damages for lack of jurisdiction, and vacated the homemaker-damages award for recalculation. As of publication $7,286,894.62 stands confirmed, with the homemaker figure still open on remand.

Simcha Berman, left quadriplegic after falling 29 feet from Newport's Cliff Walk in August 2000, settled with the City of Newport for $2 million at policy limits before a jury found the State of Rhode Island not liable.

After more than three decades of denials, the First Circuit vacated the judgment against the claimant and, on remand, an SSA administrative law judge awarded retroactive Social Security disability benefits to the estate of a Rhode Island veteran whose untreated schizophrenia had gone uncompensated since 1975.