Product Liability verdicts & settlements

Sullivan Papain was among the firms representing New York State against Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, and Lorillard, securing a $25 billion recovery through the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement.

David Casey Jr. of CaseyGerry was appointed by Judge Charles Breyer as the sole San Diego attorney on the 22-member Plaintiffs' Steering Committee overseeing MDL 2672, the consolidated clean-diesel emissions fraud litigation that produced a $14.7 billion settlement against Volkswagen.

C. Steven Yerrid, the youngest of Florida's 11-lawyer 'Dream Team,' added racketeering and conspiracy charges that tripled the damages ceiling, helping the state secure what was then the largest civil settlement in American history against the tobacco industry.

Michael C. Maher's firm, Maher, Gibson & Guiley, P.A., was one of eleven private law firms appointed to the state's Peoples' Trial Advocates in Florida's Medicaid cost-recovery lawsuit against the major cigarette manufacturers, which produced an $11.3 billion settlement, the largest tobacco recovery by a single state in U.S. history at the time.

Wayne Hogan served on the private-counsel team that secured a then-record $11.3 billion settlement from five major cigarette manufacturers, reimbursing Florida's Medicaid program for decades of smoking-related medical costs.

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.

After fifteen years of litigation and three failed bankruptcy maneuvers by Johnson and Johnson subsidiaries, Ashcraft and Gerel attorneys R. Bryant McCulley and Michelle Parfitt helped negotiate a global, uncapped settlement of at least $5.5 billion covering approximately 76,000 ovarian-cancer claims.

A Los Angeles jury ordered General Motors to pay $4.9 billion after a 1979 Chevrolet Malibu's rear-mounted fuel tank ruptured and burned six occupants in a rear-end crash, the largest US personal-injury verdict at the time.

A Los Angeles jury ordered General Motors to pay $4.9 billion after six people, including four children, were trapped and severely burned when the defectively placed fuel tank on a 1979 Chevy Malibu ruptured in a rear-end crash on Christmas Eve 1993.

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.

A St. Louis jury returned a $4.69 billion verdict against Johnson and Johnson on behalf of 22 women who developed ovarian cancer after years of using the company's talcum powder products, with Thomas K. Neill of Gray, Ritter and Graham, P.C. serving on the plaintiff trial team.

A Clark County jury awarded $3.8 billion against Real Water on March 21, 2025, after finding the Las Vegas alkaline water company liable for poisoning consumers with hydrazine-contaminated product that caused acute liver failure, autoimmune disease, and death.

Acting as outside trial counsel for Los Angeles County, the firm then known as Greene, Broillet, Taylor, Wheeler and Panish helped recover approximately $3.3 billion for the county through the 1998 nationwide Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.

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.

A Cobb County, Georgia jury found that Monsanto's Roundup caused John Barnes's non-Hodgkin lymphoma and awarded him $2.065 billion, with Arnold & Itkin's Kyle Findley serving as lead trial lawyer.

Gray Ritter Graham attorney Don Downing served as one of four court-appointed national co-lead counsel in the Syngenta MIR162 MDL, securing a $217.7 million Kansas jury verdict in 2017 and a $1.51 billion class action settlement in 2018 for more than 600,000 U.S. corn farmers, grain handlers, and ethanol producers.

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.

Court-appointed Chair Lead Counsel Peter Prieto of Podhurst Orseck coordinated the nation's largest automotive defect MDL, securing more than $1.5 billion in settlements from seven automakers for tens of millions of vehicle owners harmed by defective Takata airbag inflators.

Retained as outside counsel to the Nevada Attorney General, Eglet Adams drove more than $1.1 billion in opioid settlements across 12 agreements with over 40 defendants, including Walgreens, McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and Johnson & Johnson.

Khaldoun Baghdadi was on the plaintiffs' trial team that won a federal jury verdict topping $1 billion for six California patients harmed by DePuy's metal-on-metal Pinnacle hip implants, an award the trial judge later cut to about $543 million.

A King County jury awarded $857 million to seven former Sky Valley Education Center students and parent volunteers who developed brain damage, autoimmune disorders, and other serious illnesses after PCBs from Monsanto-made fluorescent light fixtures leaked throughout the Monroe, Washington school.

Gray Ritter Graham's Don Downing served as court-appointed co-lead counsel in a massive multidistrict lawsuit against Bayer CropScience over the 2006 contamination of the U.S. long-grain rice supply by an unapproved genetically modified strain, producing a $750 million settlement for more than 11,000 rice farmers across five Southern states.

Todd Smith served as co-lead counsel on the economic loss track of the Takata airbag MDL, helping secure a combined $702.7 million class settlement from Honda ($605 million) and Nissan ($97.7 million), approved by Judge Federico Moreno in March 2018.

After proving through 12.5 million internal company documents that Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi hid for twelve years that Plavix was ineffective in patients with a common genetic variant, the State of Hawaii secured a $700 million settlement in 2025, the largest pharmaceutical recovery in the state's history.

Cory Watson's Jon Conlin, a co-lead lawyer on the plaintiffs' steering committee, helped drive DuPont and Chemours to a $670.7 million global settlement resolving about 3,550 C-8 water-contamination cancer and injury claims.

A federal jury found CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart liable for creating an opioid public nuisance in northeast Ohio, leading to a $650 million abatement judgment, the first of its kind against pharmacy chains in U.S. history.

Boehringer Ingelheim agreed to pay $650 million in May 2014 to resolve approximately 4,000 federal lawsuits claiming the blood thinner Pradaxa caused life-threatening bleeding injuries without adequate warnings, in an MDL presided over by Judge David Herndon in the Southern District of Illinois where the court appointed TorHoerman Law's Tor Hoerman as one of five plaintiffs' co-lead counsel.

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.

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 Clark County jury awarded Henry and Lorraine Chanin $505 million against Teva Parenteral Medicines and Baxter Healthcare after finding that both companies supplied oversized propofol vials to Las Vegas endoscopy clinics, enabling the reuse that infected Henry Chanin with hepatitis C.

A St. Louis jury awarded $495 million against Abbott Laboratories after finding the company failed to warn that its Similac cow's milk formula could cause necrotizing enterocolitis in premature infants.

A St. Louis jury found trailer manufacturer Wabash National 65 percent at fault and awarded $462 million, most of it punitive, after a defective rear underride guard let a car slide beneath a trailer and kill two young fathers; a judge later cut the total to about $119.5 million.

An L.A. jury awarded Eva Echeverria $417 million after finding that decades of Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder use caused her ovarian cancer, though the trial judge later vacated the verdict and the Court of Appeal affirmed the vacatur.

Don Downing chaired the court-appointed Plaintiffs' Executive Committee in the federal dicamba MDL and negotiated a $400 million settlement with Monsanto/Bayer covering yield losses suffered by soybean farmers across the country from 2015 through 2020.

Mary Alexander & Associates served as co-counsel for seven California counties and three cities in a landmark public-nuisance action that secured a $1.15 billion trial judgment (later reduced on appeal to pre-1951 homes) and ultimately resolved in 2019 for $305 million to fund lead paint abatement across California residences.

A King County jury awarded $275 million to thirteen Sky Valley Education Center students and families who suffered neurological injuries from PCB-contaminated light fixtures manufactured by Monsanto.

A federal jury awarded $262.5 million after finding that a defective rear liftgate latch on a 1985 Dodge Caravan caused a six-year-old boy to be ejected and killed in a 1994 crash; the punitive damages were later reversed on appeal and the case settled confidentially in 2001.

In the hours before the first federal opioid trial was to begin, Spangenberg Shibley and Liber helped secure a $260 million settlement from McKesson, Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, and Teva on behalf of Cuyahoga and Summit counties.

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.

Tom Cartmell served as lead trial counsel for San Francisco Unified School District in the first JUUL bellwether trial against Altria; after plaintiffs rested, Altria agreed to pay $235 million to resolve roughly 6,000 pending e-vapor claims nationwide.

Don Downing led the nation's first certified Vioxx consumer fraud class action on behalf of up to 300,000 Missouri purchasers, securing a $220 million settlement with Merck under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act.

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.

Rainwater, Holt and Sexton was one of the founding firms on the coalition legal team that brought 72 Arkansas counties and 210 cities together to sue 65 opioid manufacturers, distributors, and retailers, part of the litigation that produced a $216 million statewide share of the national settlement announced in 2021.

A King County jury awarded three Monroe, Washington teachers $185 million after finding that PCBs manufactured by Monsanto leached from fluorescent light ballasts at their school and caused permanent neurological injuries.

A Clark County jury awarded five hepatitis C patients $182.6 million against Teva, Baxter Healthcare, and McKesson after finding the companies negligently distributed oversized propofol vials to Las Vegas endoscopy clinics without adequate warnings against multi-patient reuse.

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 King County jury awarded $165 million to eight former Sky Valley Education Center employees, including the estate of one deceased plaintiff, after finding Pharmacia LLC liable for selling PCB-containing fluorescent light ballasts without adequate warning.

John Foy & Associates was one of about a dozen co-counsel firms in the $162 million settlement for victims of a 2021 I-85 van rollover and fire in Gwinnett County that killed seven women from a sober living home.

A Tippecanoe County jury awarded $157 million to the widow of Timothy Simonton, a 42-year-old Indiana man who died in October 2005 after the locking pins on an Ol' Man tree stand failed and left him hanging from a tree during a deer-scouting outing.

A nearly decade-long securities fraud class action against Fannie Mae and its former auditor KPMG, brought on behalf of Ohio pension funds holding millions in Fannie Mae stock, settled for $153 million after Bill Markovits served as lead counsel for the class.

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 King County jury awarded $123 million to 40 plaintiffs after five international students were killed and dozens injured when a Ride the Ducks amphibious vehicle suffered a catastrophic axle fracture on Seattle's Aurora Bridge in 2015.

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.

A St. Louis jury awarded $105 million to tire technician Randy Dorman after a Bridgestone/Firestone RH5 multi-piece truck wheel explosively separated during inflation, fracturing his face, both arms, and wrist, while internal company documents showed Firestone engineers had tracked nearly 100 similar incidents for decades.

A Clark County jury awarded retired Air Force veteran Michael Washington and his wife Josephine $104 million after finding that propofol manufacturers Teva Parenteral Medicines and Baxter Healthcare knowingly supplied oversized anesthetic vials that clinics routinely reused, spreading hepatitis C to patients.

A King County jury awarded $100 million to four plaintiffs who suffered neurological, hormonal, and cancer-related illnesses after years of exposure to PCBs from defective fluorescent light fixtures at a Monroe, Washington school.

A seven-year civil RICO and antitrust class action against Duke Energy Ohio over a secret rebate scheme that favored roughly two dozen large industrial customers at the expense of about one million residential and small-business ratepayers settled for $80.875 million, with Bill Markovits and Paul DeMarco serving as lead co-counsel.

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 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 Sacramento jury awarded $73 million, including $50 million in punitive damages, after a Goodyear tire tread separation caused a Ford E-350 church van to flip four times on I-5, killing two passengers and injuring two others.

A King County jury awarded $72 million to two former Sky Valley Education Center students who developed chronic neurological injuries after years of PCB exposure from aging fluorescent light fixtures manufactured by Monsanto.

A King County jury awarded $72 million to two former students of Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Washington, finding Monsanto liable for chronic neurological injuries caused by PCB-containing fluorescent light ballasts installed in the school decades earlier.

A Ramsey County jury awarded $65.5 million to Anna Jean Houghton Carley, a 37-year-old mother of three diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma after childhood exposure to Johnson and Johnson Baby Powder, in what attorneys described as the largest asbestos verdict in Minnesota history.

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.

A Los Angeles jury awarded $58,137,361 to a construction worker who suffered third-degree burns over 75 percent of his body when a defective O-ring on a Caterpillar scraper caused flammable hydraulic fluid to spray onto a hot engine, producing what was then the largest single-plaintiff personal-injury verdict in California history.

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.

A federal jury in Columbus found that DuPont's C-8 contamination caused Travis Abbott's testicular cancer and awarded him and his wife $50 million. After the trial court applied Ohio's cap on his wife's loss-of-consortium damages, the enforceable judgment came to about $40.3 million, which the Sixth Circuit later affirmed.

Feldman Shepherd secured a combined $50 million settlement from IKEA on behalf of three families whose toddler sons were fatally crushed by MALM dressers, a result that preceded a nationwide recall of approximately 29 million chests and dressers.

After the U.S. Supreme Court's 2009 Wyeth v. Levine decision cleared the way for pharmaceutical failure-to-warn suits, Tim Misny assembled a second large block of Ohio plaintiffs harmed by a drug whose labeling omitted warnings about increased cancer risk, and secured a $50 million settlement in October 2012 as co-counsel in the related coordinated litigation.

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 Fulton County jury awarded $47.7 million after a defective rear seat latch in a 2000 Lincoln LS collapsed during a crash, severing a six-year-old girl's thoracic spinal cord and leaving her paralyzed.

Alan Feldman of Feldman Shepherd secured a $46 million settlement against IKEA on behalf of the family of a 2-year-old boy crushed by a MALM dresser in California, reported at the time as the largest child wrongful-death settlement in U.S. history.

After a 2009 Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for pharmaceutical failure-to-warn suits, Tim Misny built a roughly 1,000-case pharmaceutical tort campaign around a drug whose labeling omitted warnings about elevated heart attack and stroke risk, and one block of those cases settled for $42.5 million in 2011, with Misny working alongside co-counsel.

A Clark County jury awarded $41.5 million to a young man who sustained third-degree burns over 90 percent of his body after the motocross clothing he wore failed to protect him from a fuel fire, finding LeMans Corporation liable for selling gear that was not fire-retardant.

Jeb Butler co-tried the first Jeep rear-fuel-tank wrongful-death case to a Georgia jury, which returned a $150 million verdict in 2015 later affirmed at $40 million by the Georgia Supreme Court in 2018.

A DeKalb County jury awarded $40 million to Jessica Mundy and her husband after her 2004 Ford Explorer spontaneously shifted from park into reverse, striking and running over her, after the trial team showed Ford had known about the 'false park' transmission defect for decades.

A Boston jury returned a $39 million verdict against talc supplier Cimbar Performance Minerals after finding that asbestos-contaminated talc used in a 2014 chest procedure caused Bryce Zundel's mesothelioma seven years later, marking the first trial anywhere to connect the common pleurodesis technique to asbestos disease.

A Racine County jury found Hyundai's driver-seat and head-restraint design defective and awarded Edward and Susan Vanderventer $38.1 million, the largest single-plaintiff compensatory verdict in Wisconsin history, later upheld on appeal.

A Dallas jury awarded $37.6 million in February 2019 to Sarah Milburn, left quadriplegic after a 2015 Uber crash, after finding Honda's two-part third-row seat belt design so counterintuitive that fewer than one in ten unfamiliar users could operate it correctly; the Texas Supreme Court reversed the judgment in 2024 on statutory presumption grounds.

A Miami jury awarded $37.5 million in gross compensatory damages to John Lukacs, a 76-year-old attorney who developed bladder and oral cancer after three decades of heavy smoking. The trial court later entered a reduced judgment of about $24.8 million, which the Third District Court of Appeal affirmed.

Don Downing and Gretchen Garrison of Gray Ritter Graham served as plaintiff counsel in a multidistrict class action against Smitty's Supply and CAM2 International, securing a $31.9 million settlement for farmers and equipment owners whose machinery was damaged by defective 303 tractor hydraulic fluid.

Hoyt Tessener of Martin and Jones, joined by co-counsel Kent Emison, secured a $31 million settlement for a boy left paraplegic when a two-point rear lap belt in a 1999 Ford Escort jackknifed him during a crash, while other occupants of the same car came away with comparatively minor injuries.

A Butte County jury held MasterCraft 80 percent liable for a design defect that caused the bow of a fully loaded X45 wakeboarding boat to submerge on Lake Oroville, throwing Niki Bell into the propeller and permanently destroying her left eye and part of her frontal lobe.

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 New York jury awarded $28.5 million to retired Local 638 steamfitter James Petro Sr. after finding that his lung cancer was caused by asbestos exposure during the original construction of the World Trade Center, though the verdict was later vacated and a new trial ordered on apportionment.

An Orange County jury found Yamaha's YXZ1000R side-by-side defectively designed and awarded $26.3 million to Justin Van Tussenbrook, a Utah man paralyzed when the vehicle's rollover protection structure collapsed at low speed.

A Los Angeles jury unanimously held Conagra Brands fully liable and awarded $25 million to Roland Esparza, who developed severe bronchiolitis obliterans after years of daily exposure to butter-flavored PAM cooking spray fumes.

Wilshire Law Firm served as class counsel in a $25 million settlement resolving claims that Apple misrepresented Family Sharing's ability to share third-party app subscriptions across family accounts.

A Los Angeles jury found a defective brake sensor in a 2004 Infiniti QX56 caused the 2012 Hollywood crash that killed a mother and her two daughters, and the $25 million verdict was later upheld on appeal.

Siegfried and Jensen attorneys, led by Joseph Steele, were appointed Special Assistant Attorneys General in the Utah Attorney General's action against Eli Lilly, securing a $24 million settlement over the company's decade-long campaign to push its antipsychotic Zyprexa to Medicaid patients for conditions the FDA had never approved.

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 Middlesex County jury awarded Joseph Reppucci and his wife $20.7 million after finding that R.J. Reynolds and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. bore responsibility for the oropharyngeal cancer he developed following decades of smoking their cigarettes.

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 New Jersey court entered a $20 million judgment for Keziah Lewis, half of it punitive, against ride maker KMG for the 2017 Ohio State Fair Fire Ball failure that left her with catastrophic injuries.

A federal jury in Little Rock awarded $18.5 million after finding Honeywell liable for the mesothelioma death of a central Arkansas brake shop worker who spent years handling Bendix asbestos-containing brake products; Honeywell settled with the family for an undisclosed amount before the verdict was read.

A Dakota County jury awarded Jeffrey Wu and his wife $18.4 million after his 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee's defective monostable gear shifter caused a rollaway that crushed his left leg and required amputation.

A federal jury awarded roughly $18.3 million to musician Dax Pierson after a defective seat restraint in a 2005 Ford passenger van separated during a rollover, driving his head into the roof and leaving him paralyzed from the chest down.

A Phoenix jury ordered General Motors to pay $17 million for the wrongful death of a Scottsdale woman crushed by her own pickup, a verdict the Arizona Court of Appeals later set aside over a flawed jury instruction.

A Duval County jury awarded $15.2 million -- $3.9 million compensatory and $11.3 million punitive -- to the daughter of a lifelong Lorillard smoker who died of lung cancer, with Terrell Hogan attorneys representing the family.

A federal jury in Wichita awarded $15 million to a couple whose infant daughter was left with permanent brain damage after Wyeth's DPT vaccine, a 1987 verdict the Tenth Circuit later reversed and sent back for a new trial.

A Kansas federal jury awarded $15 million to the family of an infant who suffered severe brain damage after receiving Wyeth's whole-cell DTP vaccine, one of the largest vaccine-injury verdicts of the era.

A Columbus federal jury awarded Kenneth Vigneron Sr. $2 million in compensatory and $10.5 million in punitive damages after finding DuPont's C-8 contamination caused his testicular cancer.

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 Wichita jury awarded $11.5 million against International Playtex after finding its super-absorbent tampons caused the toxic shock syndrome death of a 21-year-old Kansas woman, with the full $10 million punitive award later reinstated by the Tenth Circuit.

A federal jury in Minnesota found Toyota 60 percent at fault for a 2006 crash in which a Camry accelerated without driver input and struck a stopped vehicle, killing several occupants, and awarded the Trice and Adams families $11.4 million.

A Minnesota jury awarded $10.2 million to Daniel Heyer, diagnosed with mesothelioma at 43 after decades of exposure to store-brand talc body powders sold under Target, Walmart, and Walgreens labels, finding all five defendant manufacturers liable for producing defective and unreasonably dangerous products.

A Duval County jury found that the collapsing roof and a defective seatbelt of a 2000 Ford Explorer caused a young driver's death in a Virginia rollover, returning $10,184,315 against Ford in the first verdict aimed squarely at the Explorer's roof and belt design.

Windle Turley won a $10.15 million jury verdict against Freightliner after the company's lightweight aluminum saddle-tank fuel system ruptured and ignited in a 1974 Texas rollover, killing a husband and wife and leaving their children orphaned. After a decade of appeals, the punitive-damages liability was upheld but the amount was reduced to $450,000.

Fore Aero agreed to pay $10 million to the family of a Bell 212 pilot killed in Alberta after investigators found the company manufactured a critical rotor-hub pin from steel weaker than specifications required.

An 11-year-old boy lost his left arm in a commercial Laundromat washer whose door could be opened mid-cycle, and Cannon & Dunphy reached a multimillion-dollar product-liability recovery against the Belgian manufacturer and the machine's suppliers.

Patrick Malone won an $8.85 million verdict against the maker of Tylenol after a former White House aide lost his liver to a drug he took exactly as directed.

A Niagara County jury awarded $8.8 million to a 16-year-old girl whose right arm was severed by a tractor-driven post-hole digger with a defectively designed safety shield, a verdict the New York Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed in April 2014.

Michael Kelly and his Walkup partners co-tried the first DePuy ASR metal-on-metal hip case to reach a jury, winning an $8.3 million Los Angeles verdict for retiree Loren Kransky that the California Court of Appeal later affirmed in full.

A Missoula County jury awarded $8.2 million, including $5.2 million in punitive damages, after Les Schwab sold a retread tire installed on the front steer axle of a cement truck that blew out on US-93 near Ronan, killing two women.

The estate of helicopter pilot Michael Russell recovered $8.15 million, then Illinois's highest reported product-liability settlement involving a helicopter, after a defective tail-rotor drive-shaft bearing caused his Agusta 109C to spin out of control and crash near DuPage Airport. Todd Smith and Brian LaCien, who later founded Smith LaCien LLP, handled the case at their prior firm, Power, Rogers & Smith P.C.

A federal jury in Louisville awarded a Kentucky family $7.24 million, including $6.25 million in punitive damages, after a defective Advanced Bionics HiRes90K cochlear implant let moisture seep inside and violently shocked their young deaf daughter.

A Kansas jury awarded $6.5 million after finding Subaru liable for a roof crush defect that left a young man a quadriplegic in a rollover crash, and the Tenth Circuit affirmed the full judgment in a published 1996 opinion.

A Contra Costa County jury awarded Sherrill Smothers $6.1 million after finding General Motors 80% liable for the defective roof design of his 1984 Corvette, which collapsed during a 1988 rollover and left him a quadriplegic.

A Los Angeles jury returned the first-ever social media product-liability verdict in March 2026, finding Meta and YouTube negligent for designing platforms that addicted a minor plaintiff and caused her lasting mental health harm, awarding $6 million in a bellwether trial coordinating roughly 1,600 California claims.

A federal jury in Milwaukee awarded three men poisoned by lead paint as children $6 million against Sherwin-Williams, DuPont, and Armstrong, a verdict the Seventh Circuit later reversed.

A retired Connecticut school principal who developed invasive breast cancer while taking Wyeth's hormone drug Prempro won a $5.8 million failure-to-warn verdict that the trial judge refused to cut.

A Kern County jury handed Coleen Perry a $5.7 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson's Ethicon unit on March 5, 2015, in the first trial ever to reach a jury over Ethicon's TVT-Abbrevo polypropylene mesh sling.

A Columbus federal jury awarded David Freeman $5.1 million for testicular cancer tied to DuPont's C-8 water contamination and found the company acted with malice, adding $500,000 in punitive damages.

The estates of two men killed when a Superior Air Parts XP-400 crankshaft failed during a 2016 Florida flight settled for $5 million, prompting the company to buy back all XP-400 and XP-382 engines it had sold.

A federal jury in Cleveland awarded $5 million to Paul Decker and his wife after finding that GE Healthcare failed to adequately warn patients about the risk of nephrogenic systemic fibrosis from its Omniscan MRI contrast agent, making Decker the first gadolinium NSF case in the country to reach a jury verdict.

Daniel A. Rottier and Christopher Rogers of Habush Habush & Rottier reached a $4 million settlement for a Wisconsin excavating worker whose legs were crushed when a defective Hendrix quick coupler let a bucket fall on him.

After two hung juries, a federal jury in Austin found Sea Ray and Mercury Marine liable for a design defect in an unguarded boat propeller that severed an 18-year-old's right leg on Lake Austin, awarding $3.8 million; the Fifth Circuit unanimously affirmed.

Gallagher & Kennedy's Robert Boatman and Mark O'Connor served as lead plaintiffs' counsel in the Bard IVC filter MDL, and the first federal bellwether trial in Phoenix ended with a $3.6 million verdict, including $2 million in punitive damages, for Sherr-Una Booker.

A Wisconsin jury returned a then-record $3.3 million verdict in 1976 for a teenage girl left brain damaged when a defective rear-axle differential in a General Motors car caused a crash, and GM settled for about $3 million after appealing.

A West Virginia federal jury awarded Jo Huskey $3.27 million after finding Ethicon's TVT-O pelvic mesh sling defective, making it the first federal bellwether verdict in the massive Ethicon MDL.

A New Jersey jury found that Wyeth's diet drug Pondimin was a cause of Gloria Stribling's primary pulmonary hypertension and assessed $3.0 million in compensatory damages against the company.

A Fulton County jury awarded $2,761,228 to the widow and estate of James Worman after a fabricated axle shaft sold by Hart's Machine Service fractured beneath the couple's 1973 Honda trike, killing James and severely injuring his wife Pamela.

An Orlando federal jury awarded Virginia Redding $2.5 million after finding that Coloplast's NovaSilk pelvic organ prolapse mesh was defectively designed and that the company had concealed known risks from her physician, in what was the first jury verdict against Coloplast for that specific device.

A jury returned a $2.5 million verdict against Coloplast -- the first in the nation targeting its Novasilk pelvic organ prolapse mesh -- after finding the device was defectively designed and that the company failed to warn Virginia Redding's physician of its risks.

A Phillips County, Arkansas jury awarded $2.5 million to tire shop owner Michael Snyder after a Chinese-made tire with an antiquated weftless bead design exploded during mounting, causing a serious head injury.

Ted Warshafsky argued that a farm grinding machine's emergency shutoff was defectively designed, and recovered $2 million for the man it maimed.

Wayne Hogan secured Florida's first asbestos punitive damages verdict for a Navy veteran who developed asbestosis from decades of exposure to Johns-Manville products, with the jury awarding $1.86 million in combined compensatory and punitive damages -- affirmed on appeal in 1984.

An Ohio federal jury found DuPont liable for Carla Bartlett's kidney cancer and awarded her $1.6 million, the first of thousands of C-8 drinking water cases to reach trial.

A Jackson County jury awarded Minnesota dairy farmers Chuck and Wanda Untiedt $1,038,775 after their herd was decimated by a defective cattle vaccine containing live virus sold by Grand Laboratories, Inc.

A Jacksonville shipyard insulator who developed severe lung disease from years of handling Philip Carey asbestos cement won a $615,000 jury verdict against Celotex Corporation, the company that had absorbed Philip Carey through merger, and the Florida Supreme Court later affirmed that a successor corporation can be held liable for punitive damages based on its predecessor's reckless conduct.

Victor Harding traced a failed saddle stirrup back through its supply chain to staples driven into a brittle plastic core, settling Ron Benda's product-liability case for $525,000 after the fall fractured his ribs, sacrum, and pelvis.

John Coletti won a multimillion-dollar jury verdict against I-Flow Corporation after the company's intra-articular pain pump destroyed Matthew Beale's shoulder cartilage following routine arthroscopic surgery, in what trial watchers tracked as the first verdict of its kind against a pain-pump manufacturer.

The Tenth Circuit reversed a preemption-based dismissal and reinstated state-law mislabeling claims brought by cancer treatment providers who alleged that Genentech's Herceptin vials consistently contained less than the labeled 440 mg of trastuzumab, with Matthew Sill of Fulmer Sill serving as co-lead MDL counsel for the hospital plaintiffs.

Catherine Lerer of McGee Lerer, co-counseling with Costell & Cornelius, filed a class action in October 2018 against Bird, Lime, Xiaomi, and Segway on behalf of riders and pedestrians seriously injured by dockless e-scooters deployed across Los Angeles.

In a December 2017 ruling, California's highest court held that Novartis owed a duty to warn consumers who took a generic bioequivalent of its drug Brethine, allowing twin children injured in utero by generic terbutaline to pursue negligence claims against the brand-name manufacturer.

John Gomez represented the families of CHP officer Mark Saylor and three relatives killed in a runaway Lexus near Santee, reaching a 2010 settlement with Toyota in the crash that triggered the company's sudden-acceleration recalls.

Michael Slack secured a confidential settlement against Robinson Helicopter after defective aluminum fuel tanks on an R-44 ruptured in a 2006 Fredericksburg, Texas crash and fire that killed the pilot and two passengers, with the deal requiring Robinson to retrofit its entire fleet with crash-resistant bladder tanks.

A certified class of Nevada insurance beneficiaries alleged that Humana secretly pocketed hospital discounts while forcing members to overpay their 20% co-share, and after a decade of litigation that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, the co-payor class recovered $11.9 million as part of a larger settlement resolving the claims.

Nearly nine years after seven Chicago-area people died from cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules, founder Philip Corboy helped the victims' families reach a confidential settlement with McNeil Consumer Products as jury selection was about to begin.

Windle Turley obtained what legal scholars credit as the first jury verdict applying the crashworthiness doctrine to an aircraft, holding Cessna liable for a fuel-system design that allowed occupants, including children, to burn to death in a post-crash fire following a Texas runway departure.