Largest Sexual Abuse Personal Injury Verdicts Never Collected

A Riverside County jury awarded $2.28 billion on April 25, 2023, to a woman identified as Jane Doe who was sexually abused by her stepfather from age 5 until she was 14, at the family's Lake Elsinore home and at events and property of the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The stepfather, who had pleaded guilty in 1997 to lewd acts with a child under 14 and served three years in state prison, admitted the abuse at deposition, then skipped the first day of jury selection and withdrew his answer rather than face a bench warrant. The church settled for $1 million and the mother for $200,000 before trial. The verdict, $836 million in compensatory damages and $1.44 billion in punitive damages after three days of deliberation, is one of the largest ever returned for a single survivor of childhood sexual abuse.

A Rio Arriba County jury held Acadia Healthcare and its New Mexico foster care subsidiaries responsible for placing an 8-year-old girl with a foster father who raped her repeatedly, returning one of the largest single-plaintiff sexual abuse verdicts in the country.

A St. Charles County judge entered a $300 million bench-trial judgment for a child, identified only as G.T., who was physically and sexually abused between the ages of three and five while in the care of Susan and James McLaurie, though one defendant died before the suit was filed and the only known insurance was a $303,000 policy.

A St. Charles County jury awarded $247.3 million to six women sexually assaulted by an unlicensed massage therapist at Oasis Foot Spa & Massage in St. Peters, finding the spa and its owner liable for hiring him without any background check and ignoring an early complaint. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in full in 2024.

A St. Louis jury awarded $28 million in compensatory damages and $149 million in punitive damages to Shannon Dugan, a New Jersey sheriff's deputy who was sexually assaulted by a Hyatt security guard who used his master key to enter her hotel room while she slept. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the full award in December 2024.

A Riverside County jury found Moreno Valley Unified School District 90 percent at fault for keeping teacher Thomas Lee West in the classroom for two decades despite molestation complaints, awarding $135 million to two former students he abused.

A Dallas jury returned a $119.6 million verdict against the Catholic Diocese of Dallas after finding it grossly negligent and fraudulent in concealing years of sexual abuse by priest Rudy Kos; eight of the eleven plaintiffs, represented by Windle Turley, later settled for $23.4 million.

On September 16, 2025, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury found Joseph Ruffalo, an 85-year-old former music manager and 1980s film producer, liable for sexual battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress against his former stepdaughter, A.Z., who testified that he abused her from 1991, when she was six, until 2007, when she was 22. The unanimous jury deliberated two hours and forty minutes and awarded $85 million in compensatory damages and $30 million in punitive damages. A.Z. had reported the abuse to police in the United States and Britain without result; Ruffalo was never charged. Her mother was a co-defendant and resolved the claims against her before trial. Ruffalo told the jury he could not pay.

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.

On June 17, 2024, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury unanimously awarded $900 million, $100 million compensatory and $800 million punitive, to a former employee of Alkiviades "Alki" David's companies who was sexually harassed and raped by him between 2016 and 2019. Liability had already been established before trial, so the jury sat only on damages, and the defense table was empty. In September 2024 the trial judge ruled that the award shocked the conscience and conditionally granted a new trial unless the plaintiff accepted $90 million, $10 million compensatory plus $80 million punitive. David filed a notice of appeal at the end of September 2024 and has said publicly that none of the women who have won verdicts against him will ever be paid.

A Los Angeles County jury found Bill Cosby liable for drugging and sexually assaulting Donna Motsinger in 1972 and awarded her $59.25 million, including $40 million in punitive damages, the largest civil judgment Cosby has faced.

On June 29, 2026, a Cook County jury returned a $50 million verdict against First Ascent Climbing and Fitness for the sexual abuse of an 8-year-old boy by an older camper at its Peoria summer camp in 2022. The award was $49 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages. The jury found the company negligent and guilty of willful and wanton misconduct. The company has said it is weighing an appeal.

A Hawaii circuit court awarded $40 million to a survivor who was raped and sexually assaulted by a Jehovah's Witnesses elder at the Makaha congregation when she was 12 years old.

In January 2024 a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury awarded $35 million to a woman identified in court as Jane Doe No. 4, who said a Pomona High School assistant track coach raped her in 1997 when she was 16. She said the principal told her to speak to no one about it. The jury assigned 70 percent of fault to Pomona Unified School District and 30 percent to the coach.

A Santa Clara County jury awarded $30 million to a man who endured years of sexual abuse as a foster child, finding the Giarretto Institute 75 percent responsible for licensing and failing to monitor the Mountain View home where the abuse occurred.

Gair Gair Conason secured a $27.5 million settlement from the Diocese of Brooklyn for four boys abused by a parish religion teacher, reported as the largest individual Catholic Church sexual-abuse payout on record at the time.

A Los Angeles County jury found Westerly School, a private K-8 school in Long Beach, 35 percent liable for years of sexual abuse committed against a teenage boy who spent his days on its campus, abused by the after-school program director the school employed. In June 2018 the jury awarded $25.3 million: $300,000 in future medical costs, $10 million in past pain and suffering, and $15 million in future pain and suffering, with the remaining fault split between the abuser and the plaintiff's parents. Westerly's apportioned share came to just under $9 million. The school's Head of School said Westerly was saddened by the abuse but would not say whether it planned to appeal, and no appeal was later reported.

A Santa Barbara jury awarded $25 million to a man identified in court papers as John Doe #2, who was groomed and sexually abused as a teenager by Justin Sell, a former security guard and assistant football coach at Dos Pueblos High School. The December 2023 verdict, reached after a three week trial, apportioned 80 percent of the fault to Santa Barbara Unified School District for keeping Sell employed and failing to report his conduct to law enforcement despite staff being mandated reporters. John Taylor and Natalie Weatherford of Taylor & Ring represented the plaintiff.

E.M. was a boarding student at the Yeshiva of New Haven from 2001 to 2005, and from age 14 to 17 the school's rabbi and chief administrator, Daniel Greer, sexually abused him on a frequent, sometimes weekly basis. In May 2017 a federal jury in Connecticut awarded E.M. $15 million against Greer and the school, and on June 6, 2017 the court entered a $21,749,041.10 judgment after adding $5 million in punitive damages and $1.75 million in offer-of-compromise interest. The Second Circuit affirmed in full on March 3, 2020, rejecting the argument that the award was excessive. Greer was separately convicted and sent to prison; by 2021 less than $240,000 of the judgment had been collected, and E.M.'s collection suits against Greer's real-estate nonprofits were resolved privately in 2024.

Seattle Public Schools agreed to pay $16 million in October 2024 to settle a lawsuit from a former Garfield High School student who said two coaches sexually abused her over several years while the district failed to intervene. The suit named volunteer coach Walter Jones, who had been barred from district employment yet was allowed to coach anyway, and assistant coach Marvin Hall, who continued an abusive relationship with her into her college years. It is the largest tort settlement in the district's history, funded mostly through the district's insurance pool. Both coaches were separately prosecuted in King County Superior Court: Hall pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct with a minor in 2025, and Jones's child rape trial ended in a hung jury and a mistrial in December 2025. Paul Sewell and Tomas Gahan of Peterson Wampold Rosato Feldman Luna represented the former student.

A girl of 14 was married to her 19-year-old cousin in a ceremony Warren Jeffs arranged and performed himself, over her objections, and then pressured to bear children. She sued Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in 2005 under the initials MJ. Neither defended. On September 5, 2017 Judge Keith Kelly entered a $16,000,000 default judgment: $4,000,000 in damages and $12,000,000 in punitive damages. Jeffs is serving life plus 20 years in Texas.

A Los Angeles County jury found the county's Department of Children and Family Services 45 percent responsible for years of sexual abuse a girl suffered in her El Monte home, returning a $45.4 million verdict in July 2018 and splitting the rest of the fault between the girl's mother and four men who lived in the apartment. Two DCFS social workers had been monitoring the family and knew a man with an arrest record for sexual abuse of a minor was staying there, but never called the county hotline or the police. The county's 45 percent share, about $20.7 million, was later brought down to a $10.5 million judgment, of which the county paid $5.5 million in the 2018 to 2019 fiscal year. David Ring and Louanne Masry represented the girl at trial.

A Franklin County Superior Court jury awarded $10 million in November 2021 to a young woman who testified that a stonemason employed by her father sexually abused her for three to four years, beginning when she was 8. The defendant had been acquitted of criminal charges in 2018. It was the largest verdict in the county's history, and with interest the Greenfield Recorder put it at about $12 million. The plaintiff sued under the pseudonym Jane Doe.

A 19-year-old woman from Oklahoma said her Uber driver raped her during a late-night ride in Arizona in November 2023. On February 5, 2026, a nine-person federal jury in Phoenix found Uber liable under an apparent-agency theory and awarded $8.5 million in compensatory damages. It was the first trial among more than 3,000 consolidated rideshare assault cases. The jury declined punitive damages and rejected the negligence and defective-design claims.