Largest verdicts in Arkansas
10 independently-sourced personal-injury results from Arkansas firms, largest first. Each links to the full story — the firm, the attorneys, and the record behind the number.
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 Benton County judge awarded $25.4 million, including more than $19 million in punitive damages, against the owner of a Springdale motel after finding it knowingly facilitated the repeated sex trafficking of a girl beginning when she was 14 years old.
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 Pulaski County circuit judge entered a $17.6 million default judgment against a former Little Rock 911 dispatcher who failed to relay a drowning-in-progress call to police and fire water rescue, resulting in the deaths of a mother and her young son over the following two years.
A federal jury held maintenance contractor Shaw Group liable under Arkansas law after U.S. Army Private Van Ryan Marcum was fatally electrocuted by an abandoned, improperly wired latrine at Fort Benning, returning a $6.5 million verdict affirmed by the Eighth Circuit.
A federal jury in Little Rock awarded Therese Westphal $2.5 million after finding that Antonella Carpenter and her company Lase Med Inc. defrauded her with sham laser treatments falsely marketed as a 100-percent cure for breast cancer.
An oiler paralyzed below the neck after a fuel-supply pontoon vessel capsized in dangerous lock-gate currents on the Arkansas River near Pine Bluff received a $1 million jury award in 1969, reported at the time as the first such verdict in Arkansas federal courts.
A Pulaski County jury ordered the owners of the America's Best Value Inn in west Little Rock to pay a sex-trafficking survivor $477,000 after finding they ignored clear signs of ongoing trafficking on their property from August through December 2019.
Diesel fuel leaked from a Felton Oil underground storage tank in Hampton, Arkansas, migrated onto the adjacent Gee property, and a jury awarded $205,000 for restoration costs and disruption, affirmed in full by the Arkansas Supreme Court.
A six-week federal jury trial found Tyson Foods liable for 43 separate Clean Water Act violations tied to industrial wastewater from its Green Forest, Arkansas poultry plant, with compensatory damages awarded to 40 Carroll County families.