Colorado Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements

A Garfield County jury returned a $205 million verdict against Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park and ride manufacturer Soaring Eagle after finding that operators launched the Haunted Mine Drop with a six-year-old girl sitting on top of an unsecured seatbelt, overriding a warning alarm that should have stopped the ride.

A Philadelphia jury found that Walmart had denied nearly 188,000 Pennsylvania workers paid rest breaks and pay for off-the-clock hours, and the judgment entered on that verdict grew to roughly $188 million.

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.

A Denver jury awarded $67,349,380 in July 2024 after a seven-month-old suffered permanent brain damage when a cardiothoracic surgeon accidentally tied off the infant's aorta during open-heart surgery and the perfusionists failed to detect the resulting loss of blood flow for more than seven hours.

A Maricopa County jury awarded $58.5 million to families who donated deceased relatives' bodies believing they would be used for medical research, only to learn the Biological Resource Center of Arizona had dismembered and sold the remains to brokers worldwide.

A federal jury awarded Georgina Perez $55.5 million after a Sunbeam Express Crock Multi-Cooker lid blew off and caused severe burns; the court later reduced the award to roughly $9.1 million under Colorado's statutory damages cap.

Chad Hemmat and co-counsel secured a $33 million wrongful death verdict for the mother of a 30-year-old Aurora engineer killed when a driver traveling nearly three times the posted speed limit ran a red light and T-boned his car at an I-225 interchange.

A Denver jury awarded $31.8 million to the family of an 82-year-old woman killed and other residents injured when a punctured Xcel Energy gas line exploded at Heather Gardens retirement community in 2018, assigning Xcel 12% of the fault.

A defective frac tank exploded under an Air Force veteran at a Weld County well pad in 2019, and a federal jury in Denver returned $30 million, though Colorado's cap on pain-and-suffering damages later cut roughly $14 million.

A Weld County jury awarded $27.6 million to a family whose newborn daughter developed E. coli sepsis and meningitis after nursing staff failed to notify a physician despite documented signs of infection, leaving her with permanent brain injury and cerebral palsy.

A Denver jury awarded $26.6 million to two adult siblings whose parents were both killed when a drowsy CWRV Transport driver rear-ended their stopped vehicle at 75 mph on a Colorado highway.

A Missouri federal jury awarded Mary Bayes $21 million after her Biomet M2a-Magnum metal-on-metal hip implant failed catastrophically, requiring seven revision surgeries and leaving her with permanently constrained hip function.

A Denver jury awarded $19.75 million to six bystanders shot by a Denver Police officer who fired into a crowd while pursuing an armed suspect in the LoDo neighborhood in July 2022.

Burg Simpson secured a $19.48 million arbitration award for the homeowners' association of an 82-unit Aurora, Colorado townhome community after proving Century Communities built the development with widespread structural, drainage, and fire-code defects.

A developmentally disabled man left with a brain injury and quadriplegia after a commercial pickup rear-ended his car won $18,809,431 from a Denver jury in May 2024, ranked the sixth-largest Colorado verdict of the year.

A Colorado jury delivered what was then the state's largest medical malpractice verdict after a four-day-old girl suffered cardiac arrest and permanent brain damage when hospital staff administered an incorrect prostaglandin dose before congenital heart surgery.

A temporary electrical box exploded and electrocuted flooring installer Brian Warembourg, and a Boulder County jury returned a $16 million verdict against the electrical contractor, the largest premises liability award in Colorado history.

A Broomfield County jury found Crested Butte Mountain Resort negligent per se for violating federal chairlift safety standards, awarding a family $12.4 million after their teenage daughter fell 30 feet from a moving ski lift and was permanently paralyzed.

A Las Animas County jury awarded Rhett Ridolfi $11.5 million after finding helmet maker Riddell negligent for failing to warn players about concussion danger, assigning 27 percent of the fault, roughly $3.1 million, to the company.

A Denver jury awarded electrician Jon Valaer $8.4 million after contractor Q3 left three energized wires hidden inside a power pedestal that shocked him and left him with complex regional pain syndrome.

A Denver jury awarded $7,110,624 to Deysi Cari after she was struck by a vehicle while crossing a marked crosswalk with the right-of-way, with the defendant having admitted liability before trial.

A Colorado jury awarded $6,945,040 to a 60-year-old shopper who slipped on solvent residue at a Kohl's self-checkout and developed Functional Neurological Disorder, after the store's expert accused her of faking her symptoms.

A federal jury awarded Jody Blatchley, former coach of New Zealand's Olympic snowboard team, $6.3 million after nurses at St. Anthony Summit Medical Center failed to recognize and report compartment syndrome for three days following his tibial surgery, leaving him with permanent foot drop and confined to a wheelchair.

A Boulder jury awarded $5.3 million to a man who fractured his spine after falling from an unsteady ladder when the homeowner walked away without warning.