Pennsylvania Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements

A Philadelphia jury awarded $8 billion in punitive damages against Johnson & Johnson over Risperdal and male breast growth in a young patient, an award the trial judge later reduced to $6.8 million.

A Philadelphia jury found that Monsanto failed to warn that Roundup could cause cancer and awarded John McKivison $2.25 billion. The trial judge later reduced the award to $400 million.

Anapol Weiss shareholder Kristen Gibbons Feden helped secure $1.6 billion in default verdicts for 104 women sexually abused as children by former Long Island pediatrician Stuart Copperman, one of the largest cumulative civil awards against a single individual in U.S. history.

Saltz Mongeluzzi and Bendesky joined the plaintiffs' leadership team that secured a $1.2 billion settlement for the families and survivors of 98 people killed when Champlain Towers South collapsed in Surfside, Florida on June 24, 2021 -- the largest construction-disaster settlement in U.S. history.

Sol Weiss and Larry Coben of Anapol Weiss served as co-lead class counsel in the landmark NFL concussion multidistrict litigation, securing a settlement valued at nearly $1 billion for thousands of retired players diagnosed with serious neurological conditions.

After Amtrak Train 188 derailed in Philadelphia in May 2015, killing eight and injuring more than 200, Kline & Specter's Thomas R. Kline led the plaintiffs' negotiations that produced a $265 million settlement fund for the victims.

Robert Mongeluzzi helped secure a $265 million federal settlement on behalf of more than 125 claimants injured or killed when Amtrak Train 188 derailed at 106 mph on a Philadelphia curve in May 2015.

A Pennsylvania-record $227 million settlement resolved claims brought by 19 victims of the June 2013 Center City building collapse, in which an improperly braced wall fell during demolition and crushed the adjoining Salvation Army thrift store, killing seven people.

When a demolition project at 22nd and Market Streets sent a four-story brick wall crashing through a Salvation Army thrift store in June 2013, seven people were killed; after nearly six months of civil trial, the defendants settled for $227 million, the largest personal-injury settlement in Pennsylvania history.

A Philadelphia jury found the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania liable for the brain injury a newborn suffered when staff delayed a cesarean section, a $182.7 million verdict that grew to a molded judgment of about $207.6 million, the largest medical malpractice award in Pennsylvania history. Kline & Specter argued and won the appeal, where the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed the full $207.6 million judgment in July 2025.

Sol Weiss served as co-lead counsel in a class action that secured $206 million in damages against two former Luzerne County judges who accepted $2.8 million in kickbacks to funnel hundreds of children into private juvenile detention facilities.

A Philadelphia jury awarded Ernest Caranci $175 million after finding that decades of Roundup use caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that Monsanto failed to warn of the risk. Kline & Specter tried the case, the first Roundup trial in Philadelphia, and the verdict was later upheld on appeal.

A $160 million settlement -- the largest pre-verdict settlement in Pennsylvania court history -- resolved claims against U-Haul after an overfilled propane tank exploded at a North Philadelphia food truck, killing a mother and her teenage daughter and severely burning three others.

A federal jury in Nevada found Ford's pickup parking brake defective and held that the company should have warned owners, returning a verdict near $153 million after three-year-old Walter White was killed by a truck that rolled in the family driveway. Shanin Specter of Kline & Specter tried the case.

A Philadelphia jury found that Ethicon negligently designed the TVT-O pelvic mesh implanted in Susan McFarland of Altoona and returned $120 million, which Kline & Specter called the largest pelvic-mesh verdict reached to that point.

An Allegheny County jury found West Penn Power negligent for the splice failure that dropped a live 7,200-volt line on Carrie Goretzka in her own backyard. The 2012 verdict reached $109 million. The utility later paid a reported $105 million to drop its appeal.

After a months-long non-jury trial in Butler County, a judge found Ernst and Young liable for accounting negligence and misrepresentation in its handling of bankruptcy records tied to a long-running Ponzi scheme, awarding Barbara Reilly $102,718,989, a verdict the Pennsylvania Superior Court later vacated and sent back for a new trial.

Four construction workers were killed and more than 30 injured when five floors of a parking garage under construction at the Tropicana Casino Resort in Atlantic City collapsed in October 2003, leading to what attorneys described as the largest construction-accident settlement in U.S. history at that time.

After an unbraced brick wall toppled during a 2013 Center City demolition and crushed a Salvation Army store, Kline & Specter's Andrew J. Stern secured a $95.6 million award for survivor Mariya Plekan, the largest individual share of a record $227 million settlement.

A Philadelphia jury awarded $85 million to a University of Pennsylvania medical student left disabled after falling 18 feet into an open Trigen Energy manhole at 19th and Walnut Streets, the largest personal injury verdict in the United States for 2008.

A Philadelphia jury returned $80 million, including $50 million in punitive damages, against Johnson & Johnson and its Ethicon unit after finding the Prolift transvaginal mesh implanted in Patricia Mesigian was defective and inadequately labeled.

A Philadelphia jury found Pottstown Memorial Medical Center liable for a newborn's severe spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy after the hospital's outdated, unmaintained ultrasound equipment led a physician to incorrectly declare the baby dead, delaying an emergency cesarean section by 81 minutes.

A Philadelphia jury awarded William Melissen $78 million, including $75 million in punitive damages, after finding that Monsanto's Roundup weed killer was a cause of his non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Kline & Specter, with co-counsel Arnold & Itkin, tried the case, the sixth Roundup trial heard by a Philadelphia jury and the fourth to go against the company.

A Philadelphia jury awarded $75.6 million to Joseph Tuski, a highway construction flagman left quadriplegic when a drunk driver who had just served himself alcohol at the bar he managed struck him at 40 mph and fled the scene.