$27 Million Minneapolis Settlement for the Family of George Floyd, the Largest Pretrial Civil Rights Wrongful-Death Settlement in U.S. History

On May 25, 2020, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes outside a convenience store at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue while Floyd, handcuffed and face-down on the pavement, repeatedly said he could not breathe. Bystander video of his death circulated worldwide within hours and set off the largest wave of protests over policing in modern American history.

That July, Floyd's family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in the District of Minnesota against the City of Minneapolis and the four officers involved. The complaint went beyond the actions of a single officer, alleging that the city's training, supervision, and disciplinary practices had allowed a culture of excessive force to persist. Ben Crump led the family's legal team, joined by Antonio Romanucci of Chicago's Romanucci & Blandin and Atlanta civil rights attorney L. Chris Stewart, among other co-counsel.

The case never reached a jury. On March 12, 2021, as jury selection was underway in Chauvin's state murder trial just blocks from where the settlement was announced, the Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously to pay the Floyd family $27 million. The family's attorneys described it as the largest pretrial settlement ever reached in a civil rights wrongful-death case in the United States, and it exceeded the city's previous record police-misconduct payout many times over.

The agreement carried a community component as well: $500,000 of the settlement was earmarked for the neighborhood business district at 38th and Chicago, the intersection where Floyd died, which had become a memorial site known as George Floyd Square. The family and its lawyers framed the settlement as one piece of a broader push for police reform in Minneapolis, alongside the policy changes the city had begun adopting after Floyd's death.

The civil resolution preceded the criminal one. The following month, Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter and was later sentenced to 22 and a half years in state prison; he and the other three officers also faced federal civil rights convictions or pleas. For Crump, the settlement cemented his standing as the attorney families turn to in the country's most consequential police-violence cases, and it set a financial benchmark that subsequent police-misconduct settlements would be measured against.