Largest verdicts in Maine
13 independently-sourced personal-injury results from Maine firms, largest first. Each links to the full story — the firm, the attorneys, and the record behind the number.
A Cumberland County jury awarded $25 million to the mother of a 15-year-old girl who died five days after a physician at Mid Coast Medical Group misdiagnosed her acute leukemia as a hormonal condition, without ordering an X-ray.
A federal jury in Pennsylvania awarded $25 million to Travis Sweigart after a tractor-trailer driver turned left across his path at the exit of Interstate 176, crushing Sweigart's pelvis and leaving him with injuries the treating surgeon described as unquestionably the worst pelvic fracture he had ever seen.
A jury awarded Robert Giordano $23.1 million after a Northern Light radiologist failed to report a large bony mass compressing his spinal cord, leaving him permanently paralyzed from the chest down.
A Vermont jury awarded $22.5 million, the second-largest verdict in state history at the time, to a Maine utility lineman who lost both legs below the knee after an ungrounded, defectively installed air-break switch at a Richford substation released a 5,000-degree electrical arc through his body.
A Penobscot County jury awarded Travis Getchell $6.5 million after finding Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center negligent for delaying emergency surgery by nearly 24 hours, leaving him partially paralyzed.
A Cumberland County jury awarded $6.5 million to the family of Peter Smith, a 25-year-old who died of Lyme carditis in July 2017 after a Mercy Hospital physician twice failed to diagnose his Lyme disease despite a textbook presentation of symptoms.
An Androscoggin County jury awarded Marielle Bischoff-Wurstle $5.5 million after Affordable Cremation Solution in Lewiston, Maine, left her father's remains unrefrigerated in an overheated basement for more than two weeks in summer 2021.
A Cumberland County jury found Mid Coast Hospital and its contracted emergency physician group liable after a walk-in clinic PA sent Joshua Desjardins home with a flu diagnosis in December 2018, when he was already showing signs of bacterial pneumonia and sepsis; three days later he was airlifted to Maine Medical Center, where he spent 31 days on life support and suffered more than ten strokes.
An eight-member federal jury in Maine awarded $4.5 million to Julia Russell, finding Philip Chenevert liable for sexually abusing her beginning when she was six years old in 1992.
A Penobscot County jury awarded $2.4 million to Louise Brown after Northern Light EMMC staff failed to secure her left arm during a 2019 endoscopic procedure, causing permanent complex regional pain syndrome.
A federal judge awarded $1,380,414.82 to the widow of Roy Palmer, a 69-year-old Army veteran who died at the Togus VA Medical Center in Augusta, Maine after staff co-administered an opioid and a benzodiazepine that carry an FDA black-box warning against simultaneous use.
A Hancock County jury awarded $750,000 to a Milbridge woman who suffered permanent hip and leg impairment after her orthopedic surgeon failed to review her post-operative X-rays for over two months and then left a centimeter-long gap in her femur during revision surgery.
Michael Whittier of Poland, Maine, reached a confidential settlement with Central Maine Medical Center after its physicians failed to act on dangerously elevated PSA levels for four years, allowing his prostate cancer to spread beyond the point of surgical cure.