California Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements

David Casey Jr. of CaseyGerry was appointed by Judge Charles Breyer as the sole San Diego attorney on the 22-member Plaintiffs' Steering Committee overseeing MDL 2672, the consolidated clean-diesel emissions fraud litigation that produced a $14.7 billion settlement against Volkswagen.

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.

As co-lead counsel in the federal Roundup multidistrict litigation and the first firm to sue Monsanto in 2015, Weitz and Luxenberg helped negotiate a $10.9 billion settlement resolving approximately 125,000 non-Hodgkin lymphoma claims against Bayer-owned Monsanto.

A Los Angeles jury ordered General Motors to pay $4.9 billion after a 1979 Chevrolet Malibu's rear-mounted fuel tank ruptured and burned six occupants in a rear-end crash, the largest US personal-injury verdict at the time.

A Los Angeles jury ordered General Motors to pay $4.9 billion after six people, including four children, were trapped and severely burned when the defectively placed fuel tank on a 1979 Chevy Malibu ruptured in a rear-end crash on Christmas Eve 1993.

The Cartwright Law Firm was among the first California filers against Merck over the painkiller Vioxx, and Robert Cartwright Jr. served on the California JCCP Plaintiffs' Steering Committee through the 2007 global resolution that distributed $4.85 billion across more than 45,000 claimants.

Acting as outside trial counsel for Los Angeles County, the firm then known as Greene, Broillet, Taylor, Wheeler and Panish helped recover approximately $3.3 billion for the county through the 1998 nationwide Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.

Frantz Law Group, led by attorneys James Frantz and William Shinoff, represented nearly 1,000 public school districts across 38 states in multidistrict litigation against JUUL Labs, reaching a $1.7 billion settlement in 2023 that covered approximately 1,600 school districts, local governments, tribal entities, and individual consumers.

Stuart Talley of Kershaw Talley Barlow secured an $800 million settlement for nearly 79,000 households who alleged CalPERS broke its promise to hold long-term care insurance rates stable, then hit policyholders with repeated premium increases totaling more than 160 percent over a decade.

Frantz Law Group secured a share of an up-to-$800 million settlement with MGM Resorts International on behalf of 199 victims of the October 2017 Route 91 Harvest festival shooting, one of the largest mass-casualty compensation funds in U.S. history.

In multidistrict litigation before Judge Andrew J. Guilford, CaseyGerry served as class counsel in a $393.5 million settlement resolving allegations that Wells Fargo secretly loaded unnecessary collateral protection insurance onto auto loan accounts, pushing hundreds of thousands of borrowers into delinquency and causing roughly 27,000 wrongful vehicle repossessions.

Mary Alexander & Associates served as co-counsel for seven California counties and three cities in a landmark public-nuisance action that secured a $1.15 billion trial judgment (later reduced on appeal to pre-1951 homes) and ultimately resolved in 2019 for $305 million to fund lead paint abatement across California residences.

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.

Beasley Allen led thousands of individual plaintiffs and hundreds of school districts to a $235 million settlement with Altria Group, which had invested in Juul and its marketing of flavored e-cigarettes to minors.

Tom Cartmell served as lead trial counsel for San Francisco Unified School District in the first JUUL bellwether trial against Altria; after plaintiffs rested, Altria agreed to pay $235 million to resolve roughly 6,000 pending e-vapor claims nationwide.

A San Diego jury awarded $223 million to a securities broker whose malpractice attorney had allowed his fraud claims against Prudential Securities to be silently released in a class action settlement, with James P. Frantz representing the broker in the ensuing litigation.

A Los Angeles County jury ordered Rebecca Grossman and former Major League pitcher Scott Erickson to pay $198.17 million for the deaths of two brothers, ages 11 and 8, struck in a marked crosswalk near their home.

A Los Angeles jury awarded $198.17 million to the Iskander family after two young brothers were struck and killed in a Westlake Village crosswalk, with Nick Movagar of M&Y Personal Injury Lawyers serving as co-counsel alongside Brian Panish.

An Alameda County jury ordered Walmart to pay $172 million to roughly 116,000 California employees who were systematically denied legally required meal breaks, part of a 26-state wage campaign that Frank Azar helped launch.

As co-lead class counsel, Kenneth McClain helped secure a $145 million settlement, approved by a federal judge in October 2024, for roughly nine million Kia and Hyundai owners whose vehicles lacked standard engine immobilizers.

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.

McGee Lerer Ogrin represented 14 of the 124 survivors whose claims were resolved in a $122.5 million settlement with the City of Santa Monica over decades of child sexual abuse by a PAL volunteer the city failed to stop.

Gayle Blatt served on the five-member Plaintiffs' Executive Committee that secured a $117.5 million settlement in multidistrict litigation arising from the largest data breach in history, covering roughly 3 billion Yahoo accounts compromised between 2013 and 2016.

As court-appointed lead plaintiffs' counsel, Morgan & Morgan's John Yanchunis negotiated the $117.5 million settlement resolving claims from Yahoo's 2013-2016 data breaches, the largest theft of personal data in history, touching roughly 3 billion accounts worldwide. Judge Lucy Koh approved the fund in 2020 after rejecting an earlier version as inadequate.