Massachusetts Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements

The family of Greg Sharrigan, killed when a gas leak ignited at his Maynard home in September 2021, sued Eversource for $450 million, alleging the utility detected the underground leak three years before the fatal explosion and never fixed it.

Thornton Law Firm served as liaison counsel on a multi-firm team that secured a $300 million class settlement from State Street Bank on behalf of pension funds and other institutional custodial clients who were secretly overcharged on foreign currency exchange trades for more than a decade.

After winning a $26.6 million jury verdict for a union mason who fell through defective scaffolding on the Longfellow Bridge, Andrew Abraham of Keches Law Group returned to court and proved that Liberty Mutual's insurers willfully refused to investigate or settle a clear liability case, prompting a judge to double the compensatory judgment to over $91 million under Chapter 93A and 176D.

Peter Merrigan of Sweeney Merrigan Personal Injury Lawyers represented 125 Massachusetts cities and towns in claims against Johnson and Johnson and the three largest opioid distributors, recovering $84.1 million in aggregate from the national opioid settlements.

A Middlesex County jury awarded Malcolm Carnwath $56 million -- the largest single-plaintiff personal-injury verdict in Massachusetts history -- after an Amazon delivery driver fell asleep, crossed the center line on a Portsmouth, New Hampshire road, and struck his vehicle head-on, causing a leg amputation, multiple strokes, and permanent brain injury.

A Middlesex County jury awarded $26.6 million to union mason John Rooney, Jr. after he fell through a two-foot scaffold gap during the Longfellow Bridge rehabilitation and suffered seven spinal operations and permanent disability, with pre-judgment interest bringing the total compensatory judgment to roughly $45.5 million.

A Massachusetts jury found Johnson & Johnson liable for Paul Lovell's mesothelioma, awarding $42.6 million in what is believed to be the largest mesothelioma verdict in the state's history.

A Middlesex County jury returned the largest personal-injury verdict in Massachusetts history after finding that an obstetrician waited more than five hours to perform an emergency C-section despite clear signs of fetal distress, causing a Dracut boy to develop cerebral palsy.

A Norfolk Superior Court jury awarded Andrea Larkin $35.4 million after finding that Dedham Medical Associates failed to document a known brain abnormality, leaving her obstetrician unaware of a condition that made vaginal delivery dangerous.

A Suffolk County jury awarded $30.55 million to the family of a boy left with catastrophic brain damage after a traveling nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital abandoned continuous fetal heart-rate monitoring during a prolonged second stage of labor.

An Essex Superior Court jury awarded $29 million to the two daughters of Joseph Brown, 43, after Salem Hospital emergency physicians failed to order a CT scan that would have revealed a fatal aortic aneurysm and dissection in time for lifesaving surgery.

A Suffolk County jury awarded $28 million, including $25 million in punitive damages, after Father's Huddle Cafe in Boston served alcohol to underage patrons who attacked Thomas Christopher, 23, chasing him into traffic where he was struck and killed; the Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed the verdict against the bar on January 28, 2003.

A Salem jury awarded $20.6 million, including $18 million in punitive damages, after a defective Banzai inflatable pool slide sold by Toys R Us collapsed and killed a 29-year-old woman in Andover, Massachusetts; the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld the full verdict in 2013.

A Middlesex Superior Court jury awarded Steven Luppold $20 million after Lowell General Hospital emergency staff misdiagnosed a leg blood clot as sciatica on two separate visits, delaying treatment until amputation was unavoidable.

A federal jury in Boston awarded $18.4 million to Sean Stentiford, a former paramedic turned attorney, after two Lahey Clinic physicians canceled an HIV test he had consented to in 2007, allowing the virus to progress undetected to AIDS and cause permanent brain damage.

A decayed tree from a neighbor's rental lot in Orange, Massachusetts fell on three women in August 2024, causing traumatic brain injuries and fractures; Franklin County Superior Court entered a $17.6 million judgment against the property owner in March 2026.

A Suffolk Superior Court jury awarded $16.7 million after a Brigham and Women's Hospital radiologist read a 2006 chest X-ray as normal, missing a visible lung nodule that would develop into terminal cancer within 13 months.

Lubin and Meyer secured a $15 million settlement for the family of six-month-old Jackson Kekula, who suffered catastrophic brain injury after going without oxygen for more than 20 minutes during a sleep study at Boston Children's Hospital and died 12 days later.

A Suffolk Superior Court jury awarded $13.5 million (a $9.4 million verdict plus interest) to the family of Amy Altman, 40, who died of a flesh-eating bacterial infection in July 2003 after Dana-Farber oncologists failed to investigate 17 consecutive days of diarrhea during an experimental chemotherapy protocol.

A federal jury awarded $10.2 million to the Trull family after finding Volkswagen negligent for equipping the rear bench of a 1986 Vanagon with lap-only belts, a design that contributed to one child's death and two severe brain injuries in a 1991 New Hampshire crash.

A Hampden County jury awarded $9.5 million to the adult daughters of Zoe Rosenthal, a 52-year-old Holyoke teacher fatally struck in a crosswalk by a visually impaired driver in 2017, in what attorneys described as a record non-economic wrongful-death verdict with adult heirs in Western Massachusetts.

A Massachusetts jury awarded $7.55 million to Gerald Sylvestre, a former New Hampshire power plant worker who developed mesothelioma after repeated exposure to asbestos insulation installed by a Canton distributor, in what was then reported as the largest asbestos verdict in New England history.

Marc Breakstone secured a $7.5 million wrongful death settlement for the family of William 'Billy' Nichols, a 46-year-old electrician killed in a July 2010 propane explosion at a Norfolk condominium construction site, after proving that a propane distributor's deliberate under-filling of a new tank caused the safety odorant to dissipate, leaving a deadly gas leak completely undetectable.

A Middlesex County jury awarded $6.8 million to Amy Ross and her two daughters after finding New England Insulation Company liable for the mesothelioma death of her husband Timothy, who had been exposed to asbestos dust doing part-time insulator work around Boston as a teenager and young adult.