Alabama Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements

A Montgomery jury returned an $11.9 billion verdict against ExxonMobil in 2003 after finding the company fraudulently underpaid Alabama on natural gas royalties from Mobile Bay state leases, though the Alabama Supreme Court later reversed the fraud count and punitive damages, leaving compensatory damages only.

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.

A Jefferson County bench trial ended in a $2.88 billion judgment against former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy for orchestrating an accounting fraud that inflated the company's reported earnings by $2.6 billion over six years.

Scott Powell of Hare Wynn Newell and Newton served as one of four co-lead class counsel in the $1.51 billion nationwide settlement against Syngenta, recovering losses for hundreds of thousands of U.S. corn growers, grain handlers, and ethanol producers whose market access to China was cut off after the company prematurely commercialized an unapproved GMO corn trait.

Monsanto and its chemical spinoff Solutia agreed in August 2003 to pay $700 million to resolve claims from more than 21,000 Anniston, Alabama residents who were exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls the company manufactured and dumped near their homes for nearly four decades.

A class action filed in 2002 on behalf of roughly 400,000 residents across six north Alabama counties ended in a court-approved $300 million cleanup settlement requiring 3M and co-defendants to remediate PFAS contamination throughout the Tennessee River watershed.

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.

Beasley Allen, representing Alabama on contingency, secured $220 million from opioid distributors Cardinal Health and Cencora after roughly 18 months of litigation, with every dollar directed to statewide opioid abatement programs.

Scott Powell of Hare Wynn Newell and Newton served as co-lead class counsel when a Kansas federal jury returned a $217.7 million compensatory verdict against Syngenta, finding the seed company negligent for commercializing its MIR162 GMO corn trait in the United States before China approved it for import, triggering a market collapse that cut off American farmers from one of their largest export buyers.

A Dallas County, Alabama jury awarded Travaris Smith $151.8 million after a 1998 Ford Explorer rolled twice and severed his spinal cord, finding Ford failed its own safety standards and destroyed test data to conceal the defect.

A federal jury found General Motors liable for defective piston rings in its 5.3-liter Vortec V8 engines and awarded $102.6 million to a class of roughly 38,000 truck and SUV owners across three states.

Hare Wynn secured a $100 million cash settlement from UBS on behalf of HealthSouth derivative stockholder plaintiffs, resolving claims that the investment bank aided and abetted one of the largest accounting frauds in American corporate history.

A federal jury in Montgomery awarded $64.1 million to Lucky Palace LLC and 15 Macon County charities after finding VictoryLand owner Milton McGregor conspired to freeze out a competing electronic bingo operation.

Hare Wynn attorneys Scott Powell and Bruce McKee won a roughly $48 million trial verdict for 11 Arkansas rice-farming families after Bayer CropScience's unapproved genetically modified rice contaminated the national supply and shut down European export markets. The verdict was one of the bellwether outcomes that pushed Bayer toward a $750 million global settlement.

An Arkansas jury awarded $5.9 million in compensatory damages and $42 million in punitive damages to Lonoke County rice farming families after Bayer CropScience's unapproved genetically modified LibertyLink rice contaminated the conventional U.S. rice supply.

A Los Angeles jury awarded $40 million to Monica Kent and Deborah Schultz, finding Johnson & Johnson liable for ovarian cancer the women developed after decades of using talc-based baby powder.

A Bessemer jury returned a $15 million verdict against the owners of a BP convenience store that sold beer to an underage driver whose vehicle struck a tree, killing a 13-year-old passenger and injuring three others in May 2007.

A Jefferson County jury awarded $10 million to Sheriff's Deputy Aimee Jo Brasher after Hueytown Police Officer David McIntosh allowed his narcotics dog, Rocco, to run uncontrolled and unmuzzled during a May 2021 training exercise, mauling her face and body.

A Shelby County jury found Norfolk Southern 100 percent at fault after veteran conductor Thomas David Jordan was struck by a passing BNSF train while working between dangerously close tracks in South Memphis, awarding $5 million under the Federal Employers' Liability Act. Wettermark Keith co-founder Chris Keith was counsel of record for Jordan, and the Tennessee Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment entered on the verdict in 2009.

Farris, Riley & Pitt secured a confidential settlement for the mother of Jamea Harris, a 23-year-old woman killed in a January 2023 shooting on the Tuscaloosa Strip, with proceeds placed in trust for her young son.

Heninger Garrison Davis served as class counsel for spouses and family members of problem gamblers in a multidistrict litigation against DraftKings and FanDuel, winning separate settlements in 2021 and 2022 that directed $700,000 in charitable donations to responsible-gaming organizations and forced both platforms to overhaul how they handle family exclusion requests.

Stephen D. Heninger of Heninger Garrison Davis represented sports artist Daniel Moore to final victory after the University of Alabama spent eight years trying to force him to license every painting that showed a Crimson Tide uniform.