Largest West Virginia Personal Injury Settlements

Johna Ankrom, 52, was shopping with her granddaughter when Wal-Mart employees detained a shoplifter in the vestibule's main traffic aisle. He broke away, collided with her cart and pulled it down on top of her. She suffered traumatic intestinal injuries, went through multiple surgeries, and now lives with a permanent ileostomy.

John Mark Gillenwater, 42, was working the first runs of a new process to dry a chlorinated bleach compound at the Optima Belle plant in the Kanawha Valley. The dryer exploded with a force experts likened to two tons of TNT. A jury found the process should never have been run as designed and awarded his widow $15 million.

A federal jury in West Virginia awarded $10.8 million to a child and her parents after finding that hospital staff failed to prevent oxygen deprivation during delivery, causing permanent cerebral palsy.

Lewis Timmons, 61, was transferring hydrogen from his tanker into the storage system at the Muskingum River power plant when the storage area exploded and killed him. The enclosure had a defective roof and undersized copper relief stacks that could not vent a release, and an earlier hydrogen explosion at an AEP facility had already produced safety recommendations the company never acted on.

Richard Edwards Jr. was loading lengths of metal pipe onto his truck when the forklift operator reversed without warning, dragging the pipe off the bed and onto his foot. His right leg was amputated below the knee. The jury held both trucking companies liable, and the Fourth Circuit affirmed every dollar.

A 14-year-old high school freshman was riding home from a soccer match with her father on Interstate 79 when their vehicle struck the rear of a flatbed semi hauling lumber uphill at 21 mph in the dark. The plaintiffs' case was that the truck should never have been on that road: overloaded by more than 11,000 pounds, inadequately lit, and driven by a man not properly licensed for it.

A West Virginia federal jury awarded Jo Huskey $3.27 million after finding Ethicon's TVT-O pelvic mesh sling defective, making it the first federal bellwether verdict in the massive Ethicon MDL.

A 22-year-old worker creeping along a West Virginia interstate on a flat tire was rear-ended and thrown from his vehicle, and Marks & Harrison resolved the case for $3 million.

DeMayo Law attorneys Elizabeth G. Grimes and Michael A. DeMayo won a $3 million settlement for an elderly North Carolina man who was run over by another vehicle while standing beside his disabled car on a West Virginia roadside.

A Berkeley County, West Virginia jury found Dr. Aurelio Benavides negligent in a 1994 vasectomy that left Kent Gerver in chronic groin pain, and awarded him $2,118,431.11 plus $50,000 to his wife for loss of consortium. Months later the trial judge ordered a new trial, citing surveillance video the defense gathered after the verdict. In December 1999 the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals restored the verdict, refused to cut the award under the state's cap on noneconomic damages, and sent the case back for judgment on it.

Donna Cisson was implanted with C.R. Bard's Avaulta Plus transvaginal mesh and developed chronic pelvic pain and bleeding requiring surgical revision. The polypropylene resin supplier's own material safety data sheet cautioned against permanent implantation in the human body. The jury returned $2 million including punitive damages, and the Fourth Circuit affirmed.

Dan Carter stepped in clear liquid pooled on white tile in a Huntington pharmacy aisle and fell backward, hitting the back of his head on the edge of a metal shelf. He declined treatment and went home. Three days later he had a seizure while walking his dogs, and imaging showed an acute cerebellar stroke.

A woman came to the Wetzel County Hospital emergency room in 2001 and came under the care of a surgeon who, the estate proved, failed to perform the exploratory surgery that would have found and corrected her intra-abdominal condition. She went into shock and died the next day. The jury awarded $4 million. She was paid $1,162,741.60.

Edmond Exline, 45, a paranoid schizophrenic apparently in the middle of a mental-health episode, was walking beside Interstate 81 near Martinsburg when three State Police troopers detained him. Tasers were deployed multiple times. He became unresponsive and was pronounced dead. The State Police settled for $1 million.