Largest verdicts in District of Columbia

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.

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.

A 59-year-old woman went in for elective lumbar surgery to relieve chronic back pain and came out severely brain-damaged after her iliac artery was severed; an Arlington County jury awarded $35,620,902, the second-highest Virginia medical malpractice verdict that year, before the state cap cut the judgment to $2.2 million.

Price Benowitz, with co-counsel Ben Crump, filed a $25 million wrongful death suit for the father of Rolin Hill, who died in 2024 after Virginia Beach jail deputies restrained and beat him during a mental health crisis.

A DC Superior Court jury awarded $17.1 million to the three children of Tiffaney Dunbar, 33, who died in February 2017 after a nurse practitioner at MedStar Washington Hospital Center's Women's Wellness Clinic failed to diagnose and disclose an ectopic pregnancy.

Chaikin, Sherman, Cammarata & Siegel filed the original class action and served as co-counsel alongside lead counsel Sanford Heisler in a $14.25 million settlement for women secretly recorded by a Washington, DC rabbi at a Jewish ritual bath over nearly a decade.

A tractor-trailer drifted into a retired 20-year veteran's lane on Interstate 95 North and killed him, and Marks & Harrison recovered $10 million for his family before any lawsuit was filed.

A City of Richmond worker suffered permanent brain damage when a runaway Norfolk Southern boxcar with a missing brake rod drove a floodwall gate into him, and a Richmond jury returned a $10 million verdict.

A heavy retail display toppled onto a 7-year-old, fracturing the child's skull and forcing emergency brain surgery, and Marks & Harrison resolved the premises liability case for $9 million.

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 D.C. Superior Court jury awarded $8.35 million after an orthopedic surgeon failed to recognize the loss of blood flow to an 82-year-old patient's leg following a knee replacement, leaving the limb to die and require an above-knee amputation.

A Montgomery County jury found a Maryland dermatology practice liable for the death of 47-year-old attorney Richard Semsker, whose melanoma went untreated for two years.

A 40-year-old store manager was left permanently impaired after a radiologist dismissed signs of a carotid blockage on her MRI, and a D.C. jury awarded $5,774,156 for the malpractice that preceded her stroke.

A police chase on wet Virginia roads ended in a head-on collision that killed a six-months-pregnant passenger's unborn son and left her with catastrophic injuries, and the case settled for $5.24 million.

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.

Joseph Cammarata secured a $4.5 million jury verdict for Sherry Galloway, a pedestrian dragged under a DASH bus in August 2014 by a driver Alexandria Transit Company kept behind the wheel despite four prior preventable accidents.

A premature newborn suffered a permanent chemical burn and stunted growth in her right ankle after an IV line leaked caustic fluid into the surrounding tissue, and a District of Columbia jury awarded her $3.6 million.

A Washington, D.C. jury awarded $3.05 million against a pediatrician who failed to send a feverish child for emergency care before an invasive Group A strep infection and toxic shock cost him both legs, and the trial court entered a net judgment of $1,525,000 after the hospital's pro rata settlement credit.

A 22-year-old worker creeping along a West Virginia interstate on a flat tire was rear-ended and thrown from his vehicle, and Marks & Harrison resolved the case for $3 million.

Marks & Harrison settled a Virginia negligence claim for $2.65 million for a plaintiff who recovered physically after hospitalization but kept struggling with lasting emotional injuries.

A Prince George's County jury found an undercover officer liable for fatally shooting Prince Jones, an unarmed Howard University student stopped in a case of mistaken identity, and awarded his young daughter $2.5 million.

A falling dead limb left a person with a concussion and a shoulder injury on private property, and Marks & Harrison settled the premises-liability claim for $2 million after mediation ended an eight-day trial before it began.

A District of Columbia jury awarded $2 million to a hardware store customer who suffered a subdural hematoma and emergency brain surgery after a Hechinger employee assaulted him, and the D.C. Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict in full.

Marks & Harrison recovered $1.4 million for a homebuilding worker bitten without provocation by a dog its owners knew had bitten before, who then dislocated his kneecap on a kitchen island while trying to get away.

Patrick Malone won a $1.4 million wrongful-death verdict against a gynecologist who missed a patient's precancerous condition, then took an appeal that limited how much a nonsettling doctor may deduct for a codefendant's settlement.

Peter TerVeer, a Library of Congress management analyst, was fired in 2012 after his supervisor learned he was gay through a Facebook page and subjected him to months of religious harassment; Thomas Simeone helped secure a Title VII sex-stereotyping ruling that survived a motion to dismiss, and the case ultimately settled for $235,000.

Joseph Cammarata secured a confidential settlement for seven women who sued Bill Cosby for defamation after he publicly branded their sexual-assault allegations as lies.

Regan Zambri Long PLLC, co-counsel with two other Washington firms, secured a confidential settlement in November 2019 for more than 70 victims of the August 2016 natural gas explosion that destroyed two Silver Spring apartment buildings, killed seven residents, and sent dozens more to the hospital.

Kim Brooks-Rodney of Cohen & Cohen filed a $100 million wrongful death complaint against Skyline Towers and property manager Equity Residential after a three-year-old boy fell 26 stories through a defective window screen in Fairfax County, alleging the company had known about the hazard since 2015 and failed to warn families.

Price Benowitz brought a federal civil rights and wrongful death suit after Alonzo Smith, 27, died in 2015 while special police officers restrained him face down at a Southeast Washington apartment complex.

A federal judge held the United States could be sued under the Federal Tort Claims Act for a tree limb that fell on pedestrian Mary Lou Walen during Hurricane Sandy, rejecting the government's sovereign-immunity defense and later denying summary judgment.

A Washington, D.C. woman sued the Tenleytown Massage Envy franchise and its corporate parent for $25 million after a massage therapist with a documented history of prior complaints sexually assaulted her during a 2017 appointment.

Cohen & Cohen attorney Kim Brooks-Rodney represented Malbert Rich and other passengers injured in the January 2015 L'Enfant Plaza Metro smoke emergency, filing suit against WMATA for negligent maintenance and delayed evacuation.

The family of a construction superintendent fatally burned when an underground steam pipe ruptured in downtown Washington in 2004 settled their wrongful death case confidentially with the federal government, D.C. Water, and the contractors named in the suit.

Patrick Regan and Salvatore Zambri represented families of nine people killed when a Red Line Metro train struck a stopped train near Fort Totten station on June 22, 2009, ultimately obtaining confidential settlements from WMATA and three equipment manufacturers who admitted liability.

Patrick Regan co-represented widow Kathy Wone in a $20 million wrongful death suit against three defendants acquitted of obstruction charges in the 2006 murder of Washington attorney Robert Wone, reaching a confidential settlement in August 2011.

Patrick Regan represented the adult children of slain New York Times journalist David Rosenbaum in a $20 million lawsuit against Washington, DC for catastrophic emergency response failures, achieving a 2007 settlement that compelled a complete overhaul of the city's EMS system and a separate confidential settlement with Howard University Hospital.

Thomas Simeone led a class action on behalf of deaf and hard-of-hearing Washington, D.C., moviegoers, obtaining a 2004 federal court settlement that required AMC Entertainment and Loews Cineplex to install rear-window captioning systems, giving the D.C. deaf community broader access to captioned first-run films than any comparable market in the country.

Joseph Cammarata co-represented Paula Jones before the US Supreme Court and secured a unanimous ruling that a sitting president holds no immunity from civil suit for conduct predating his time in office.