Louisiana Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements

As court-appointed co-lead plaintiffs counsel in the federal Actos MDL, Paul Pennock of Weitz and Luxenberg helped the plaintiffs' team win a $9 billion punitive damages verdict against Takeda Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly on behalf of a New York man whose bladder cancer was linked to years of taking the diabetes drug pioglitazone.

Paul Pennock, now head of mass torts at Morgan & Morgan, then co-lead counsel of the federal Actos MDL at Weitz & Luxenberg, helped try the bellwether case that produced a $9 billion punitive verdict against Takeda and Eli Lilly for hiding the diabetes drug's bladder cancer risk. The award was later cut to about $36.9 million, but the verdict drove Takeda to a $2.4 billion global settlement in 2015.

A Louisiana federal jury awarded Terrence Allen $9 billion in punitive damages against Takeda and Eli Lilly after finding they hid Actos's bladder cancer risk for years, with W. Mark Lanier serving as lead trial counsel in the first federal bellwether trial of the massive MDL.

Appointed by the court as Plaintiffs Liaison Counsel and Co-Lead Class Counsel, Stephen Herman of Herman Herman and Katz helped negotiate a $7.8 billion economic and property-damage class settlement with BP covering more than 100,000 Gulf Coast businesses and individuals harmed by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Merck agreed in November 2007 to pay $4.85 billion to resolve more than 47,000 personal injury claims tied to Vioxx, the painkiller the company pulled from the market in 2004 after studies linked it to heart attacks and strokes, with Beasley Allen serving as one of the lead plaintiffs firms in the litigation.

As chair of the plaintiffs' negotiating committee and Liaison Counsel in the Vioxx multidistrict litigation, Russ Herman directed the negotiations that produced a $4.85 billion settlement with Merck resolving approximately 45,000 to 50,000 personal-injury claims.

Hugh Lambert served on the Plaintiffs Steering Committee in MDL 2047, the sprawling federal litigation against Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin that produced a landmark settlement valued at up to $1 billion to remediate roughly 4,500 sulfur-contaminated homes across Florida, Louisiana, and dozens of other states.

Joseph Bruno and Bruno & Bruno served as lead plaintiffs' counsel in a landmark class action brought by more than 8,000 Gentilly residents exposed to a butadiene tank-car fire in 1987, securing a jury verdict that included $2.5 billion in punitive damages against CSX Transportation alone, later reduced to $850 million on appeal and affirmed by Louisiana's Fourth Circuit.

A New Orleans jury ordered four major tobacco companies to fund a $591 million statewide smoking cessation program for more than 200,000 Louisiana smokers, the first verdict of its kind in U.S. history.

A New Orleans jury ordered the major tobacco companies to fund a statewide smoking-cessation program for more than 200,000 Louisiana smokers who became addicted before 1988, awarding $591 million in one of the largest class-action verdicts against the tobacco industry.

Hugh Lambert served on the court-appointed Plaintiffs Steering Committee that secured a $330 million class action settlement for roughly 6,000 St. Bernard Parish homeowners whose properties were contaminated when Hurricane Katrina dislodged a crude oil storage tank at Murphy Oil's Meraux, Louisiana refinery.

Hugh Lambert, a court-appointed member of the Plaintiffs Steering Committee in MDL 2047, helped negotiate a $248 million settlement against Taishan Gypsum and affiliated manufacturers, resolving the second major tranche of a decade-long federal litigation over sulfur-contaminated Chinese drywall installed in thousands of American homes.

Serving as court-appointed Plaintiffs' Liaison Counsel, Russ Herman of Herman Herman and Katz spent more than a decade guiding the Chinese-manufactured drywall multidistrict litigation to a $248 million settlement with Taishan Gypsum that covered thousands of homeowners across the Gulf Coast and Southeast.

Representing more clergy abuse survivors in the Archdiocese of New Orleans bankruptcy than any other firm, Herman, Katz, Gisleson and Cain helped push a five-year Chapter 11 proceeding to a $230 million settlement confirmed in December 2025, with additional recovery against Travelers Insurance still pending.

Joseph Bruno served on the eight-member Plaintiffs' Legal Committee in a federal class action covering more than 17,000 people harmed when a corrosion failure triggered a catastrophic pre-dawn explosion at Shell's Norco, Louisiana refinery in May 1988, ultimately settling for nearly $172 million.

The Louisiana Supreme Court reinstated a $92.7 million penalty judgment against the state's insurer of last resort after it failed to begin adjusting more than 18,000 homeowner claims within 30 days of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, with Stephen Herman of Herman Herman and Katz among the attorneys who won the class on behalf of policyholders.

Joseph Bruno served as class counsel in a long-running class action on behalf of children who suffered lead poisoning from hazardous paint in Housing Authority of New Orleans units, securing a settlement fund of roughly $65.5 million.

Joseph Bruno led a class-action lawsuit against Tenet Healthcare after 45 patients died at Memorial Medical Center during Hurricane Katrina, securing a $25 million settlement in 2011.

Joseph Bruno served as Liaison Counsel in the federal class action that secured a $20.2 million settlement from the Orleans, East Jefferson, and Lake Borgne Basin levee districts for negligent levee maintenance that contributed to catastrophic flooding during Hurricane Katrina.

The City of Baton Rouge agreed to pay $4.5 million to the five children of Alton Sterling, who was fatally shot by police outside a Baton Rouge convenience store in July 2016, after the East Baton Rouge Metro Council approved the settlement in February 2021.

In a first-of-its-kind nationwide class action, Kiefer & Kiefer attorney Megan Kiefer secured a $3 million federal settlement for nearly 1,000 tenants of the Willows Apartments in New Orleans East who paid rent during years of deteriorating, hazardous conditions.

An Orleans Parish jury awarded $332,300 to the owners of Fat River Farm after an Orkin employee mistakenly fogged their Lower 9th Ward organic operation with a broad-spectrum pesticide in 2022, costing the farm its organic certification for three years and disrupting its ecosystem.

Appointed co-lead counsel in the federal Limitation of Liability proceedings, Lambert Zainey represented 14 of the 19 people aboard the Seacor Power, resolving all seven Jones Act death claims, six DOHSA claims, and six survivor claims by November 2023.

In a landmark 2009 bellwether trial, U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval held the Army Corps of Engineers liable for negligent maintenance of the MRGO shipping channel, awarding roughly $719,000 to plaintiffs whose homes were destroyed when Hurricane Katrina surge poured through the corridor into St. Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward.