Top Wrongful Death Personal Injury Verdicts Never Collected

In December 2011, a Fayette County, Texas jury awarded the family of an 8-year-old Splendora boy $150.37 billion after he was doused with gasoline and set on fire by a 13-year-old neighbor in 1998, two weeks after the same neighbor sexually assaulted him. The boy survived third-degree burns over 99 percent of his body for nearly 13 years before dying in April 2011 of a skin cancer linked to his injuries. The defendant, Don Wilburn Collins, never appeared to answer the civil suit, and the jury awarded $370 million in actual damages plus roughly $150 billion in punitive damages, the largest civil verdict in U.S. history. Attorney Craig Sico, who represented the family, said from the outset that the judgment was not collectible and was intended to pressure prosecutors into reopening the long-dormant criminal case. Prosecutors did reopen the case, and Collins was later convicted of capital murder in a separate criminal proceeding.

A Pensacola jury awarded Cynthia Robinson $23.6 billion in punitive damages against R.J. Reynolds over the 1996 lung cancer death of her 36-year-old husband, the largest single-plaintiff award of Florida's Engle tobacco litigation, but the trial judge called the number constitutionally excessive, an appeals court ordered a full retrial over improper closing arguments, and a second jury returned a complete defense verdict in 2019, so the estate ultimately collected nothing.

Frantz Law Group, representing roughly 5,000 victims, helped negotiate a $13.5 billion PG&E bankruptcy settlement covering tens of thousands of survivors and families from the 2015 Butte, 2017 North Bay, and 2018 Camp wildfires.

Leavitt, Yamane and Soldner represented Maui wildfire survivors and victims' families in the $4.037 billion global settlement resolving approximately 450 lawsuits arising from the August 2023 Lahaina fire.

Rachel Furst of Grossman Roth Yaffa Cohen served as co-chair of the plaintiffs' team that secured a $1.2 billion settlement for the families of 98 people killed when Champlain Towers South collapsed in Surfside, Florida -- the largest construction-disaster settlement in U.S. history.

Judd Rosen served as court-appointed lead attorney for the wrongful death and non-owner victim class in the Champlain Towers South collapse litigation, helping secure a $1.2 billion global settlement for the families of the 98 people killed when the Surfside, Florida condominium tower fell on June 24, 2021.

Court-appointed co-chair lead counsel Ricardo Martinez-Cid of Podhurst Orseck helped secure over $1 billion for the families of 98 people killed in the June 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside, Florida, with final approval reached in under a year.

After Champlain Towers South collapsed in the middle of the night and killed 98 people, Curtis Miner of Colson Hicks Eidson served as court-appointed liaison counsel for the wrongful death and personal injury claimants, part of a leadership team that reached a roughly $1.02 billion class settlement.

Sol Weiss and Larry Coben of Anapol Weiss served as co-lead class counsel in the landmark NFL concussion multidistrict litigation, securing a settlement valued at nearly $1 billion for thousands of retired players diagnosed with serious neurological conditions.

In July 1999, a Philadelphia jury awarded $907 million against Ira Einhorn for the 1977 killing of his girlfriend, Helen 'Holly' Maddux, in a civil wrongful death and survival action filed by her family. Einhorn was a fugitive living in France at the time and sent no attorney, so the court directed a verdict for the family on liability and left the six-member jury to decide damages alone. The jury deliberated a little over an hour before returning $752 million in punitive damages and $155 million in compensatory damages. Firm founder James E. Beasley represented the Maddux family. The suit was never intended to collect money from a fugitive with no assets; it was filed to stop Einhorn from profiting off book or movie deals about the case.

Steven Marks and Kristina Infante of Podhurst Orseck secured a combined $844 million in wrongful-death judgments for 43 families of passengers killed when LaMia Flight 2933 crashed near Medellin, Colombia, in November 2016, killing 71 of the 77 people aboard.

A Starr County jury unanimously awarded more than $1.6 billion combined to the families of two workers killed in a 2023 explosion at the Pecos Liquids Handling Facility, with $812 million going to the Garcia Peña family and roughly $809 million to the Alaffa family, finding owner Upton Assets, LLC grossly negligent, though the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy about two weeks before the verdict and collection remains uncertain.

Robert Eglet of Eglet Adams served as lead counsel for approximately 2,500 of the more than 4,400 plaintiffs who secured an $800 million settlement from MGM Resorts International over the October 1, 2017 Route 91 Harvest Festival mass shooting, one of the largest victim-compensation settlements in U.S. history.

A St. Louis County jury returned a $745 million verdict against nitrous oxide distributor United Brands and local head shop Coughing Cardinal after finding the companies conspired to sell Whip-It! canisters as an inhalant to a driver who passed out behind the wheel and fatally struck 25-year-old Marissa Politte outside her workplace.

A Harris County jury awarded $640 million to the family of David Lester Loree II, a journeyman pipefitter fatally crushed when a top-heavy HVAC unit being lifted by TNT Crane and Rigging overturned in high winds at a Texas A&M University-San Antonio construction site in September 2021.

A Clark County jury awarded $550 million -- $50 million compensatory and $500 million punitive -- to Nimfa Escobia after her husband Marcial was killed by a driver traveling 107 mph while impaired by alcohol, methamphetamine, ecstasy, and marijuana.

A Dallas County jury found developer Greystar liable for the 2019 tower crane collapse that killed 29-year-old Kiersten Smith in her apartment, returning an $860 million verdict that Jason and Cory Itkin helped win for her family. The trial court cut the $500 million exemplary award under the Texas statutory cap before signing judgment in August 2023, entering $360,012,006 in compensatory damages jointly and severally against the three Greystar entities plus prejudgment interest, and Greystar's appeal, argued in February 2026, is undecided.

Jamie Lebovitz served on the federal MDL Plaintiff's Steering Committee for the Alaska Airlines Flight 261 disaster, representing 18 families in confidential individual settlements as part of a broader litigation that recovered more than $300 million for surviving relatives of the 88 people killed.

Robert Mongeluzzi helped secure a $265 million federal settlement on behalf of more than 125 claimants injured or killed when Amtrak Train 188 derailed at 106 mph on a Philadelphia curve in May 2015.

After Amtrak Train 188 derailed in Philadelphia in May 2015, killing eight and injuring more than 200, Kline & Specter's Thomas R. Kline led the plaintiffs' negotiations that produced a $265 million settlement fund for the victims.

A Dallas jury found Charter Communications liable for the December 2019 murder of 83-year-old customer Betty Jo McClain Thomas by Roy Holden Jr., a Spectrum field technician who had serviced her home the day before, and for forging her signature on an arbitration agreement after her death. The jury awarded $375 million in actual damages and $7 billion in punitive damages. The family then remitted the punitive award down to twice the compensatory damages, in line with the due-process ratio limits the U.S. Supreme Court set in State Farm v. Campbell, and the trial court entered judgment for $1.147 billion. The family later agreed to a further remittitur to $262 million rather than keep defending the larger figure on appeal. Charter then settled confidentially for less than that, funded by its liability insurance, while its appeal to the Fifth Court of Appeals was still pending, and the appeal was dismissed at Charter's own request.

A Miami federal jury found Tesla 33% liable for a 2019 Key Largo crash that killed a 22-year-old woman and severely injured her boyfriend, awarding $243 million including $200 million in punitive damages in the first federal trial over a fatal Autopilot accident.

A Bexar County civil jury awarded $210 million to the family of Andreen McDonald, killed by her husband in 2019, in what is reported to be the largest personal injury verdict in county history.

Sol Weiss served as co-lead counsel in a class action that secured $206 million in damages against two former Luzerne County judges who accepted $2.8 million in kickbacks to funnel hundreds of children into private juvenile detention facilities.