Largest verdicts in Maryland

A Baltimore jury awarded Catonsville businessman Scott Steele $276 million after finding that First Union National Bank defrauded his settlement-services company and used his proprietary technology to build a competing business projected to generate $2.4 billion in profits.

A Philadelphia jury returned a $182.7 million verdict -- later reaching $207.6 million with interest and upheld through the Pennsylvania Superior Court in July 2025 -- against the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for a 45-minute delay in performing a C-section on a mother with a known uterine infection, leaving her child with permanent cerebral palsy.

Jonathan Schochor served as lead attorney for more than 8,000 women who reached a $190 million class-action settlement against Johns Hopkins Hospital after gynecologist Dr. Nikita Levy secretly filmed patients during examinations over a 25-year career.

William H. Murphy Jr. co-counseled the $185 million settlement against Ernst and Young, the largest single-defendant civil settlement in Maryland history at the time, after the accounting firm provided incompetent turnaround advice that accelerated Merry-Go-Round Enterprises into liquidation.

Schochor, Federico and Staton, P.A. represented the largest single group of plaintiffs in a $123 million class-action settlement against Beebe Medical Center for institutional failures that allowed pediatrician Earl Bradley to abuse hundreds of children over 15 years.

A Baltimore City jury returned a $105 million wrongful-death verdict against off-duty Officer Rodney Price, who shot Tristin Little Sr. more than a dozen times with his service weapon in March 2001; the trial court later reduced the award to approximately $26.99 million.

A Baltimore City jury awarded $55 million after Johns Hopkins Hospital delayed an emergency cesarean section for more than two hours following a home-birth transfer, leaving infant Enzo Martinez with permanent cerebral palsy and profound neurological injuries.

Hassan Murphy co-led the class action against Constellation Energy after fly ash from a coal plant fouled private drinking wells in a Gambrills neighborhood, producing a $54 million package that connected affected homes to public water and established a $9.5 million resident trust fund.

William H. Murphy Jr. won a $44 million Baltimore jury verdict after a police officer threw handcuffed Albert Mosley headfirst into a concrete jail cell wall, rendering him a permanent quadriplegic; the city refused to pay and the case ultimately settled for $1 million.

Murphy Falcon and Murphy served as lead class counsel in a $37 million settlement on behalf of 273 patients who underwent medically unnecessary cardiac stent procedures performed by Dr. Mark Midei at St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson, Maryland.

After a 13-week trial, a Baltimore City jury awarded $34.33 million to 20 Ruth's Chris Steakhouse workers and three of their spouses after the workers suffered permanent brain damage when carbon monoxide from Pier Five Hotel's boiler system flooded their workplace over several months in early 2008.

A Baltimore County jury found that University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center performed an unjustified emergency cesarean section on a mother showing no confirmed signs of labor, delivering her son at 23 weeks and causing severe brain damage that will require lifelong care.

A Baltimore City jury returned a $21.5 million verdict against two landlord companies whose failure to conduct any background check on a maintenance worker allowed a convicted sex offender to rape, slash, and set two tenants on fire.

A Baltimore City jury returned a $21 million verdict against MedStar Harbor Hospital after physicians failed to perform a timely emergency cesarean section during a premature delivery, causing a newborn to suffer oxygen deprivation and permanent spastic diplegic cerebral palsy.

William H. Murphy Jr. secured a $20 million settlement for the family of William Howard Green, a 43-year-old father shot six times by a Prince George's County officer while handcuffed in the front seat of a patrol car -- at the time the largest such settlement ever paid by a Maryland local government.

A Harford County jury returned a $13.3 million verdict against Upper Chesapeake Medical Center and its attending obstetrician after nursing staff failed to recognize fetal distress signals during a 17-hour induced labor, leaving a boy born in 2004 with permanent brain damage and intellectual disability.

A Baltimore jury awarded $10 million to the family of Dennis Allen, a pastor who died in 2013 after University of Maryland Medical Center administered Kayexalate with sorbitol, causing colonic necrosis; the verdict was affirmed on appeal and reduced to $906,250 under Maryland's statutory cap.

A Baltimore City jury returned a $5.87 million wrongful-death verdict against the University of Maryland Medical System after hospital staff failed to recognize and treat cardiac tamponade in a heart-surgery patient, delaying specialist intervention for more than an hour while she deteriorated.

A Prince George's County jury awarded $5.5 million after a 53-year-old woman bled to death when improperly placed cardiac pacing wires lacerated her bypass graft upon removal five days after open-heart surgery.

A Baltimore City jury awarded $5.2 million after Saint Agnes Hospital emergency staff sent Kevin Tolson home with a knee-strain diagnosis, missing a torn popliteal artery that led to an above-the-knee amputation two days later.

Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Dana Middleton awarded $3,250,479 to four plaintiffs, including a toddler with severe burns to her face and hands, after a temple founder added gasoline to a wind-whipped bonfire during a 2024 harvest festival in South Baltimore.

A Montgomery County jury returned a $2.5 million verdict for the family of Lawrence Dixon, 59, who died two days after a fall because his physician failed to recognize and treat the signs of hemorrhagic shock from a pelvic fracture.

A Montgomery County jury awarded $2,045,213 to a veteran ER nurse permanently paralyzed when her orthopedic surgeon operated on the wrong side of her spine, finding both negligence and lack of informed consent.

A pharmacist who wore a COVID face covering into a Columbia store was repeatedly tased, handcuffed and locked in a back room by a security guard, and a Baltimore City jury awarded him $2 million.

A Baltimore County jury awarded $2 million to the family of Maria Abid after her obstetrician failed to act on ultrasound evidence of premature gestation and withheld corticosteroids that could have supported lung development before Maria was born at 33 weeks, leaving her with cerebral palsy.

A Baltimore County jury found in favor of Gerald McCrae Sr. after an orthopedic surgeon's repeated failure to remove an infected hip prosthesis caused septic shock, multiple strokes, organ failure, and permanent neurological and physical disability.

A Baltimore County jury awarded $1.75 million to the family of Albert 'Tom' Rochfort Jr., a retired science teacher who died days after an emergency physician dismissed his chest pain as a muscle strain instead of ordering the CT scan that would have caught an early aortic dissection.

A Baltimore County jury awarded $1.5 million to Wanda Saffer, 72, after finding that gastroenterologist Dr. Mark Noar performed an ERCP without her informed consent, causing necrotizing pancreatitis that left her with permanent digestive and metabolic injuries.

A Montgomery County jury returned a $1.3 million gross verdict, reduced to approximately $1.27 million after Maryland statutory caps, for the parents of Ruben Bastien, a 23-year-old Army Reservist who died after an ER physician at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring failed to act on an abnormal EKG and sent him home without cardiology consultation.

A Talbot County jury awarded Bruce Clarke $970,900 after his surgeon perforated his stomach during robotic hernia repair and closed without detecting or repairing the injury, leaving Clarke to develop sepsis and chronic, disabling complications.

After a night-shift janitor stepped into an unmarked, uncovered trench left by electrical workers at a Baltimore County school, a Baltimore City jury awarded her $537,365 for a severe ankle fracture that kept her off her feet for three years.

A Baltimore City jury awarded $436,211.75 to the estate of Toni L. Hoffman after finding the Maryland Transit Administration negligent for a 2014 incident in which closing light rail doors trapped her arm and dragged her roughly 20 feet along a station platform.

A Baltimore jury found that a plainclothes detective punched Jerriel Lyles in the face without justification at a neighborhood carryout, awarding $500,000 in damages later reduced to $200,000 under Maryland's statutory cap on municipal liability.

The estate and daughter of Patricia Martin, a 36-year-old Domino Sugar employee who died after superheated slurry burned nearly half her body during a routine maintenance task, settled confidentially against the equipment contractor Maryland Mechanical Systems Inc. at the close of the plaintiff's case in July 2004.