Largest verdicts in Minnesota
22 independently-sourced personal-injury results from Minnesota firms, largest first. Each links to the full story — the firm, the attorneys, and the record behind the number.
A Ramsey County jury awarded $65.5 million to Anna Jean Houghton Carley, a 37-year-old mother of three diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma after childhood exposure to Johnson and Johnson Baby Powder, in what attorneys described as the largest asbestos verdict in Minnesota history.
William Sieben of Schwebel, Goetz & Sieben co-led a class of approximately 100,000 current and former Minnesota Walmart employees whose wage-and-hour claims resulted in a $54.25 million settlement after a judge found more than two million violations of state labor law.
James Schwebel represented 34 victims in a three-year lawsuit against engineering firm URS Corp, whose negligent inspection of the Minneapolis I-35W bridge preceded its August 2007 collapse, killing 13 people and injuring 145 others.
A St. Croix County jury awarded $29 million to a Wisconsin boy born with cerebral palsy after a certified nurse-midwife failed to call the on-call obstetrician when his fetal heart rate collapsed during labor.
A six-week Anoka County trial ended with a $24 million jury verdict against BNSF Railway after four young people died at a malfunctioning Ferry Street grade crossing in September 2003.
A Dakota County jury awarded Jeffrey Wu and his wife $18.4 million after his 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee's defective monostable gear shifter caused a rollaway that crushed his left leg and required amputation.
A Minnesota jury awarded $10.2 million to Daniel Heyer, diagnosed with mesothelioma at 43 after decades of exposure to store-brand talc body powders sold under Target, Walmart, and Walgreens labels, finding all five defendant manufacturers liable for producing defective and unreasonably dangerous products.
A Hennepin County jury awarded $6 million after a drop-in daycare at Grand Casino Mille Lacs left a three-year-old boy unsupervised for roughly 90 minutes while an older child physically and sexually assaulted him.
A Hennepin County jury awarded $5.33 million after a Metro Transit bus driver closed the doors and pulled away while Christopher Swickard was approaching, causing the rear wheels to run over him and require amputation of his left leg below the knee.
Following a $24 million wrongful-death jury verdict, Anoka County District Court Judge Ellen Maas imposed more than $4.2 million in additional sanctions against BNSF Railway for destroying evidence, fabricating records, and obstructing the investigation of a crash that killed four young people.
A 53-year-old nurse rear-ended by a semi-truck on Highway 94 suffered a mild traumatic brain injury that cut her working capacity in half, and a three-attorney arbitration panel awarded her $3,041,784 after four years of litigation.
Thirteen years after Minneapolis florist Robert Nachtsheim was shot and killed in an officially unsolved homicide, a Hennepin County jury found businessman Norman Wartnick civilly liable and awarded his widow $2,350,000 in compensatory and punitive damages, a verdict the Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed in 1987.
Dakota County paid $2.25 million to settle a wrongful death suit brought by Tory Hart after county child protection workers recommended reuniting his six-year-old son with the mother, who fatally shot the child ten days after a court terminated its jurisdiction.
A 91-year-old woman lost her leg in a car accident where fault was admitted immediately, but American Family Insurance delayed paying her claim for months; a Minnesota jury awarded $2.2 million after the insurer's repeated low offers.
A corporate executive and mother of two suffered a traumatic brain injury when an underinsured driver T-boned her car; her own insurer, Acuity, offered $250,000 against a $1.5 million policy, and a Minnesota jury returned a $2.1 million verdict.
A TSR Injury Law trial team secured a $1.1 million jury verdict for a woman who suffered three cervical surgeries after a 16-year-old driving on only a learner's permit struck her car broadside.
A Jackson County jury awarded Minnesota dairy farmers Chuck and Wanda Untiedt $1,038,775 after their herd was decimated by a defective cattle vaccine containing live virus sold by Grand Laboratories, Inc.
A Becker County jury awarded $750,000 against WE Fest organizers and their security contractor after finding both negligent for hiring a campground attendant with a prior felony sex-offense conviction who assaulted a female camper in 2006.
A Dane County jury awarded Leonard Pozner $450,000 against conspiracy author James Fetzer after ruling that Fetzer's book falsely accused Pozner of forging his son's death certificate following the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre.
Rich Ruohonen secured a $265,000 uninsured motorist verdict against State Farm in Hennepin County, trying one of the first civil jury trials in Minnesota after COVID-19 lockdowns shut down the courts.
After a Federal Signal flasher on a Minneapolis police van disabled the brake-shift interlock and the van surged into a Holidazzle Parade crowd, killing two and injuring nine, James R. Schwebel and James S. Ballentine of Schwebel, Goetz and Sieben won a precedent-setting appeal holding that a self-insured municipality must pay no-fault benefits independent of the municipal tort liability cap.
After Galaxy Airlines Flight 203 crashed on takeoff from Reno killing 70 of 71 aboard in January 1985, James Schwebel of Schwebel, Goetz, Sieben and Hanson served as counsel to the court-appointed Plaintiffs' Liability Committee, which coordinated liability discovery on behalf of all plaintiffs and was entitled to a percentage of each individual settlement.