Largest verdicts in Florida
76 independently-sourced personal-injury results from Florida firms, largest first. Each links to the full story — the firm, the attorneys, and the record behind the number.
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.
Aaron Podhurst served on the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee in the 13-year antitrust class action against the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, which ended in a $2.8 billion settlement for more than 3.3 million healthcare providers.
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.
Judd Rosen served as court-appointed lead attorney for the wrongful death and non-owner victim class in the Champlain Towers South collapse litigation, helping secure a $1.2 billion global settlement for the families of the 98 people killed when the Surfside, Florida condominium tower fell on June 24, 2021.
Rachel Furst of Grossman Roth Yaffa Cohen served as co-chair of the plaintiffs' team that secured a $1.2 billion settlement for the families of 98 people killed when Champlain Towers South collapsed in Surfside, Florida -- the largest construction-disaster settlement in U.S. history.
Court-appointed co-chair lead counsel Ricardo Martinez-Cid of Podhurst Orseck helped secure over $1 billion for the families of 98 people killed in the June 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside, Florida, with final approval reached in under a year.
After Champlain Towers South collapsed in the middle of the night and killed 98 people, Curtis Miner of Colson Hicks Eidson served as court-appointed liaison counsel for the wrongful death and personal injury claimants, part of a leadership team that reached a roughly $1.02 billion class settlement.
A Nassau County jury found two trucking companies responsible for the 2017 chain-reaction crash on I-95 near Yulee that killed 18-year-old Connor Dzion, returning a $1 billion verdict that Curry Pajcic won for the teen's parents.
Steven Marks and Kristina Infante of Podhurst Orseck secured a combined $844 million in wrongful-death judgments for 43 families of passengers killed when LaMia Flight 2933 crashed near Medellin, Colombia, in November 2016, killing 71 of the 77 people aboard.
Steven Marks and Ricardo Martinez-Cid of Podhurst Orseck served on the NFL Concussion Litigation Plaintiffs' Executive Committee, helping negotiate an uncapped settlement projected to exceed $1 billion for more than 20,000 retired players suffering traumatic brain injuries.
A Miami federal court entered a roughly $440 million judgment against Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, and MSC for using port terminals Cuba confiscated in 1960, a result the Supreme Court reinstated by a vote of 8 to 1 in 2026.
Aaron Podhurst served as lead class counsel in a $410 million settlement resolving claims that Bank of America systematically manipulated the order of debit card transactions to drive up overdraft fees charged to more than 13 million customers.
A Hernando County jury returned a $330 million verdict for Angela Stone after a drunk driver ran a stop sign and fatally struck a minivan carrying her 13-year-old daughter.
Steven Marks of Podhurst Orseck served as lead liaison counsel for the state-court plaintiffs and on the federal MDL Plaintiffs' Steering Committee, helping recover more than $262 million across insurance settlements for the families of the 110 people killed in the May 1996 crash.
A Hillsborough County jury awarded $216.8 million to Allan Navarro after an emergency room misdiagnosed his stroke as sinusitis, leaving him permanently paralyzed. It was the largest medical malpractice verdict in Florida history at the time.
A Nassau County jury awarded $141.5 million, including $125 million in punitive damages, against K&N Logging after an unvetted driver's 80,000-pound log truck plowed into stopped school-zone traffic and left a young child with permanent brain damage.
Stuart Grossman, Neal Roth, and Alex Arteaga-Gomez of Grossman Roth Yaffa Cohen represented families in the $127.5 million federal settlement arising from the FBI's failure to follow up on a tip warning that Nikolas Cruz was planning a school shooting five weeks before the February 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas massacre.
Kristina Infante and the Podhurst Orseck team secured a $127.5 million settlement from the federal government on behalf of 40 survivors and families of victims killed or wounded in the February 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, after demonstrating the FBI received advance warnings it failed to investigate.
A Palm Beach County jury awarded $100 million to a toddler left permanently injured after Dr. Berto Lopez performed a circumcision ten days after the Florida Board of Medicine revoked his license.
Colson Hicks Eidson served as co-counsel to a class of Jewish families and helped reach a roughly $100 million settlement with Service Corporation International after workers at two South Florida Menorah Gardens cemeteries buried people in the wrong graves and discarded scattered remains.
A Miami-Dade jury returned a $95 million verdict, among the largest motor-vehicle awards in the history of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, for the family of a young woman killed and her brother catastrophically injured when a drunk driver traveled the wrong way on I-95 in December 2015 after being overserved at a Miami bar.
Stuart Grossman and Seth Miles won an $80 million federal default judgment for three Cuban nationals who were trafficked to Curaçao and compelled to work 16-hour shifts repairing ships for a fraction of a cent per hour under the Alien Tort Claims Act.
A Hillsborough County jury awarded $76.8 million in compensatory damages to the family of Dana Maria Rivera, a 36-year-old mother of four killed on February 28, 2025, when Nicholas Betancourt, released from a DUI arrest that same morning, crossed the center line on Gunn Highway in Odessa while impaired by cocaine and methamphetamine.
A Miami-Dade jury found Eller Media liable for the 1998 electrocution of a 12-year-old boy at a bus shelter wired by unlicensed electricians and awarded $65.1 million.
A Hillsborough County jury returned a $64.5 million verdict for Robert Matthews, a young construction worker left permanently disabled after an 11,000-pound prefabricated building shifted and collapsed on him at a Mosaic fertilizer company mine site.
A federal judge found the Navy's Jacksonville hospital liable for the brain injury of a baby born in distress and entered a $60.9 million award, then the largest Federal Tort Claims Act recovery in the country, before part of it was cut on appeal.
After a speeding BMW rear-ended a mother and her four children stopped at an Ocala red light, a Marion County jury awarded the family nearly $52 million, reported as the largest verdict in the county's history.
A Broward County jury awarded $43 million to Steadman and Eileen Haase after an 18-year-old drunk driver crossed the median on Rock Island Road in Lauderhill on December 22, 2019, sending his car airborne and crushing the couple's vehicle.
Colson Hicks Eidson won a $38.3 million Miami-Dade verdict for Amanda Slavin after a neurosurgeon injected methylene blue, a dye contraindicated for spinal use, into her spine and left her with disabling nerve damage; the judgment against pharmacy contractor McKesson was later reversed on appeal.
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.
Stuart Grossman and Andrew Yaffa secured a $37.37 million wrongful-death verdict against Florida Power and Light after a utility crew deactivated a traffic signal without notifying police, causing a fatal multi-vehicle collision that killed a 12-year-old girl.
Goldberg & Rosen attorneys Judd and Brett Rosen secured a $35 million jury verdict against drunk driver Thomas Cypress, whose blood-alcohol level was three times the legal limit when he killed retired Maryland couple Robert and Paulette Kirkpatrick on Tamiami Trail in 2009, producing what was at the time the largest damages award for surviving adult children in Florida history.
A Hillsborough County jury awarded $30.1 million to a passenger left with a permanent brain injury after the truck driver's insurer refused to offer more than its $100,000 policy limit, a verdict the Florida Supreme Court unanimously preserved in 2023.
A Hillsborough County jury awarded $30 million to the parents of Hannah Waite, 23, who died of septic shock after doctors at Kindred Hospital left a known small-intestine ulcer untreated for two months.
C. Steven Yerrid, retained as Tampa's special counsel, secured a $27.4 million settlement from BP for economic damages the city sustained after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill -- the largest BP payout to any single U.S. municipality.
A Seminole County jury awarded $24.1 million -- the largest verdict in county history at the time -- after an obstetrician's prolonged vacuum extraction and use of fundal pressure caused a uterine rupture that deprived a newborn girl of oxygen and left her with severe cerebral palsy.
A Broward County jury awarded $24 million to the widower of Alana DeMella, a seven-months-pregnant hotel guest killed when a drunk driver crashed into a pool cabana at the Riverside Hotel in Fort Lauderdale in 2012.
A Duval County jury returned an $18.74 million verdict after Joshua Mathews suffered a traumatic brain injury in a 2012 assault outside Pete's Bar in Neptune Beach.
Justin Shapiro of Leesfield and Partners secured a $16 million settlement for a 67-year-old woman who was beaten and sexually assaulted in the open hallway of a northwest Miami-Dade Rodeway Inn while hotel employees and the property's security guard stood by and did nothing.
A Broward County jury awarded $15.4 million to Dwight Grant, a 22-year-old backseat passenger who suffered skull fractures and permanent frontal-lobe brain damage when a drunk driver with a BAC of .21 rear-ended the stopped car at a drawbridge in Pompano Beach.
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.
Goldberg and Rosen secured a $13 million jury verdict on behalf of a man left near death after a nightclub bouncer's felony battery, but a Miami judge vacated the award in 2024 and ordered a new trial after finding the defendants were wrongly barred from presenting certain defenses.
A Bradford County jury returned an $11,629,759.42 verdict for Michael Pelfrey after a truck driver working under J.B. Hunt's authority rear-ended his vehicle at a Starke traffic light, leaving Pelfrey with serious and permanent injuries. The jury assigned Pelfrey 20 percent of the fault, and the court entered a net final judgment of $9,293,807.54.
A Duval County jury returned an $11.6 million verdict for James Lightfoot after Marilyn Hunt rear-ended him in 2011, with $10 million of the award covering pain and suffering; the Florida First District Court of Appeal affirmed the damages in 2020.
A Manatee County jury returned an $11 million verdict, including more than $9.8 million in punitive damages, against road-construction subcontractor L.E. Myers Co. after the firm proved it failed to close a required traffic lane, leading to a fatal collision in the work zone.
Stuart Grossman secured a $10.75 million settlement for Bernard Barlow, a Massachusetts vacationer who broke his neck diving from the Galleon Resort's tiki bar deck in April 2015 after the tide receded and the resort posted no warnings.
A Miami-Dade jury awarded $10,577,853.93 to plaintiff David Brown after a 2015 T-bone collision left him with a traumatic brain injury, a stroke, and two years during which he could not speak, eat, or drink.
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.
A Florida jury awarded $10 million to the family of a 10-year-old boy with Down syndrome who died after a pharmacy dispensed more than ten times the prescribed dose of methadone.
A Nassau County jury held Starbucks fully responsible for the layout of its Fernandina Beach store and awarded Sherry Gold $8.97 million after a vehicle leaving the drive-thru struck her in the parking lot.
A Flagler County jury awarded trucker Jo'Relle Deleston $8.64 million after a TDC Transportation truck drifted out of its lane and back across I-95 into him, flipping his rig and breaking his neck.
A Duval County jury awarded $8,183,993 to a Jacksonville family after their one-year-old son choked on an apple slice at Primrose School of Glen Kernan, went into cardiac arrest, and sustained permanent brain damage from oxygen deprivation.
Stuart Grossman secured a $7.5 million settlement plus $1,000 per day in lifetime care costs for Antonio Edwards, a 24-year-old left permanently brain-damaged after a Miami officer applied a chokehold and slammed him into the pavement during a 1992 arrest, prompting the city to ban the technique.
An Orange County jury awarded $6.8 million to Mary Sheffield, widow of Valton Sheffield, who died of lung cancer decades after becoming addicted to R.J. Reynolds cigarettes as a teenager.
A Hillsborough County jury awarded $6.7 million to Angel Martinez and his wife after contaminated oysters served at a Tampa seafood restaurant triggered Guillain-Barre syndrome that left him paralyzed from the waist down for months.
Justin Shapiro of Leesfield and Partners secured a $6 million policy-limits settlement for a client who suffered multiple skull fractures and brain hemorrhages after being struck in a crosswalk, completing the resolution during the Florida COVID-19 shutdown of 2020.
A Gadsden County jury awarded James Simmons $5,459,008 after a grinding wheel shattered and left him permanently blind, finding the tool's owner liable for concealing a prior blade failure and removing the grinder's safety guard.
A Miami jury awarded $5.2 million to the estate of cyclist Miguel Del Angel Ortiz, killed in a 2022 truck collision, after Goldberg and Rosen attorneys rejected a $80,000 settlement and proved the driver was distracted on a phone call.
A Hamilton County jury awarded $5,211,500 to a tow truck driver severely injured by sulfuric acid from a Simon's Trucking tractor-trailer wreck on Interstate 75, a verdict the Florida Supreme Court ultimately upheld in a landmark ruling that expanded personal injury recovery under the state's Water Quality Assurance Act.
A Miami-Dade jury awarded $5 million in January 2023 to the family of Robert Hoffman, who died of lung cancer at 46 after smoking Marlboro cigarettes as a teenager and quitting before age 30, with Philip Morris held 60 percent at fault.
Jimmy Fasig won a $5 million jury verdict for the father of a woman killed in a crash near a Flying J travel center, but the award was wiped out on appeal after the father died while post-trial motions were still pending.
A Hardee County jury awarded $5 million to the parents of Michael Lieux, a former Marine with a brain injury who died of positional asphyxia after FINR staff pinned him face-down using a technique the facility called 'therapeutic containment.'
A St. Johns County jury awarded Kelli Bynum $4 million for the death of her husband, triathlete Jared Bynum, who was struck and killed by an SUV while training on Nocatee Parkway in 2012.
A Palm Beach County jury awarded $3 million to Darrell Phillips, a handyman who fractured his humerus and suffered permanent radial nerve damage after tripping over wire mesh concealed in a grassy area behind a convenience store where he had been hired to repair the beer-cooler AC unit.
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 Duval County jury returned a $2.5 million verdict for the family of Anne Fiorito, an elderly dementia patient who lost sight in one eye after a Vitas Healthcare hospice aide struck her during a bathing routine at Cypress Village Retirement Community.
A Lee County jury awarded $2,180,044 to John Kenneth Anderson after The Bottom Line nightclub in Fort Myers served alcohol to a 19-year-old patron who then attacked Anderson in the parking lot, causing a traumatic brain injury with permanent memory loss and partial hearing loss.
Hillsborough County schools paid a then-record $2 million after a 16-year-old Wharton High linebacker struck his head on a field-lining machine left on the practice area, suffering a fractured skull and traumatic brain injury that put him in a coma for nine days.
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.
Thomas Scolaro and Justin Shapiro of Leesfield Scolaro secured a $1.575 million settlement for a Broward electrician who fell eight feet from an unsecured marina ladder while boarding an 83-foot yacht at River Bend Marina in Fort Lauderdale.
Justin Shapiro of Leesfield and Partners negotiated a $1.25 million presuit settlement for the family of an 84-year-old man fatally struck by a hit-and-run driver in Orlando, despite the vehicle owner and the driver both invoking the Fifth Amendment and refusing to cooperate with their insurer.
A Duval County jury returned a $1.83 million verdict against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco in the wrongful-death claim of Kenneth Hiott, a longtime smoker who died of lung cancer; the trial court reduced the award to $730,000 based on comparative fault, and Florida's First District Court of Appeal affirmed in January 2014.
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.
A Marion County jury awarded Constance Griffis $160,000 after finding that a 2010 rear-end collision on US 441 caused a traumatic brain injury that produced lasting seizures, memory loss, and cognitive disruption.