Largest verdicts in Missouri

A St. Louis jury returned a $4.69 billion verdict against Johnson and Johnson on behalf of 22 women who developed ovarian cancer after years of using the company's talcum powder products, with Thomas K. Neill of Gray, Ritter and Graham, P.C. serving on the plaintiff trial team.

Gray Ritter Graham attorney Don Downing served as one of four court-appointed national co-lead counsel in the Syngenta MIR162 MDL, securing a $217.7 million Kansas jury verdict in 2017 and a $1.51 billion class action settlement in 2018 for more than 600,000 U.S. corn farmers, grain handlers, and ethanol producers.

Gray Ritter Graham's Don Downing served as court-appointed co-lead counsel in a massive multidistrict lawsuit against Bayer CropScience over the 2006 contamination of the U.S. long-grain rice supply by an unapproved genetically modified strain, producing a $750 million settlement for more than 11,000 rice farmers across five Southern states.

A St. Louis County jury returned a $745 million verdict against nitrous oxide distributor United Brands and local head shop Coughing Cardinal after finding the companies conspired to sell Whip-It! canisters as an inhalant to a driver who passed out behind the wheel and fatally struck 25-year-old Marissa Politte outside her workplace.

A Champaign County jury returned a $535 million verdict -- the largest known single-plaintiff verdict in Illinois history -- against a psychiatric facility that failed to prevent the rape of a 13-year-old female patient by another adolescent resident.

A St. Louis jury found trailer manufacturer Wabash National 65 percent at fault and awarded $462 million, most of it punitive, after a defective rear underride guard let a car slide beneath a trailer and kill two young fathers; a judge later cut the total to about $119.5 million.

A St. Louis jury awarded $462 million against trailer maker Wabash National after its defective rear-impact guard failed and allowed a car to slide beneath a trailer on I-55, killing Taron Tailor, 30, and Nicholas Perkins, 23, in 2019.

A St. Louis jury returned a $462 million verdict against trailer maker Wabash National for a 2019 underride crash that killed two young fathers, with the award later reduced to approximately $119.5 million by the trial judge.

Don Downing chaired the court-appointed Plaintiffs' Executive Committee in the federal dicamba MDL and negotiated a $400 million settlement with Monsanto/Bayer covering yield losses suffered by soybean farmers across the country from 2015 through 2020.

Tom Cartmell served as lead trial counsel for San Francisco Unified School District in the first JUUL bellwether trial against Altria; after plaintiffs rested, Altria agreed to pay $235 million to resolve roughly 6,000 pending e-vapor claims nationwide.

Don Downing led the nation's first certified Vioxx consumer fraud class action on behalf of up to 300,000 Missouri purchasers, securing a $220 million settlement with Merck under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act.

A Cole County jury awarded $113.7 million to roughly 13,000 Missouri corrections officers who were required to clear security checkpoints and retrieve equipment before and after their paid shifts without receiving a minute of compensation for that time.

A four-day trial ended with a $109.2 million verdict against LaFarge North America after Simon Law proved the supplier knowingly sold Gleeson Asphalt base rock that did not meet the grade it was labeled and paid for.

A St. Louis jury awarded $105 million to tire technician Randy Dorman after a Bridgestone/Firestone RH5 multi-piece truck wheel explosively separated during inflation, fracturing his face, both arms, and wrist, while internal company documents showed Firestone engineers had tracked nearly 100 similar incidents for decades.

A St. Louis County jury awarded $55.4 million to more than 400 investors in InnerPoint Energy Corp. after Simon Law proved that company insiders, including descendants of Anheuser-Busch co-founder Eberhard Anheuser, concealed a rising Michigan energy asset while telling shareholders their investments were worthless.

Maurice Graham of Gray, Ritter and Graham secured a $55 million class action settlement in Doyle v. Fluor for Herculaneum, Missouri homeowners whose properties were contaminated by lead emissions from the Doe Run smelter.

Simon Law secured a $50 million wrongful death settlement after a young man with intellectual disabilities died when a national durable medical equipment supplier repeatedly ignored his mother's calls for a replacement breathing device.

A St. Louis County jury returned Missouri's largest reported medical malpractice verdict after finding that Mercy Hospital East Communities and its obstetrician allowed a first-time mother to push for more than 12 hours without intervention, causing the infant global hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy and permanent cerebral palsy.

Tom Neill of Gray, Ritter and Graham represented the family of one victim killed when a 3,000-pound pressurized steam vessel exploded at Loy-Lange Box Company in St. Louis's Soulard neighborhood, launching the tank into a neighboring laundry and killing four people total; consolidated wrongful-death, injury, and property suits settled for more than $47 million.

Don Downing and Gretchen Garrison of Gray Ritter Graham served as plaintiff counsel in a multidistrict class action against Smitty's Supply and CAM2 International, securing a $31.9 million settlement for farmers and equipment owners whose machinery was damaged by defective 303 tractor hydraulic fluid.

The Bruning Law Firm served as class counsel for St. Louis Rams PSL holders who sued after the team's 2016 relocation to Los Angeles, securing a $24 million federal class-action settlement approved in June 2019.

A federal jury in Wichita awarded $23.5 million to a Yellow Freight co-driver left with debilitating injuries after a Swift Transportation driver, impaired by methamphetamine, backed her rig from a rest stop onto U.S. Highway 54 in New Mexico.

A St. Louis jury awarded $18,254,033 to a young girl whose E. coli O157:H7 infection was repeatedly missed across three emergency visits to Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital, leaving her with permanent kidney failure and insulin-dependent diabetes.

After United States Aircraft Insurance Group sat on a $100,000 voluntary-settlement offer for more than a year following a fatal 2013 Kansas plane crash, a Riley County judge held the insurer responsible for the entire $11.5 million wrongful-death judgment entered against its insured.

A commercial truck driver crossed the center line on a Buchanan County road in July 2022, killing two teenagers and seriously injuring a third young passenger; five plaintiff families reached a $10.5 million global settlement in January 2024.

A Jackson County jury returned a $6.7 million verdict, including $3.5 million in punitive damages, against Kansas City Power and Light after Frederick Trotman's aluminum ladder contacted an uninsulated 7,000-volt line 17 inches from his home, sending him into cardiac arrest.

A Kansas jury awarded $6.5 million after finding Subaru liable for a roof crush defect that left a young man a quadriplegic in a rollover crash, and the Tenth Circuit affirmed the full judgment in a published 1996 opinion.

A Los Angeles jury returned the first-ever social media product-liability verdict in March 2026, finding Meta and YouTube negligent for designing platforms that addicted a minor plaintiff and caused her lasting mental health harm, awarding $6 million in a bellwether trial coordinating roughly 1,600 California claims.

Brown & Crouppen helped Zachary Patchin's family reach a $5.97 million settlement after an Ice Cream Factory box truck crossed into oncoming traffic in a no-passing zone and killed both drivers on U.S. 50 in Osage County, Missouri.

A Johnson County jury awarded $5.7 million to the family of Kim Yates, a 49-year-old woman who died by suicide three days after AdventHealth Shawnee Mission discharged her despite an initial triage assessment flagging her as high risk, in what records show is the largest wrongful death or medical malpractice verdict in Johnson County history.

A Kern County jury handed Coleen Perry a $5.7 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson's Ethicon unit on March 5, 2015, in the first trial ever to reach a jury over Ethicon's TVT-Abbrevo polypropylene mesh sling.

A drywall installer who fell through a hole cut in a home's subfloor, suffering a thoracic burst fracture and incomplete paraplegia, settled with the project developer and a drywall delivery company for $5 million.

Three families whose relative died when a Two Men and a Truck driver ran a red light in Weldon Spring, Missouri recovered $5 million from the franchise owner, J&C Enterprises Inc., in a wrongful death settlement reached in August 2022.

A West Virginia federal jury awarded Jo Huskey $3.27 million after finding Ethicon's TVT-O pelvic mesh sling defective, making it the first federal bellwether verdict in the massive Ethicon MDL.

A Johnson County jury returned the largest medical-malpractice verdict in the county in more than 25 years after finding a pain clinic and its physician responsible for a spinal MRSA infection that destroyed a patient's quality of life.

After a rear-end collision in stop-and-go traffic left James Geringer needing cervical disc replacement and hip surgery, The Bruning Law Firm secured a $2.5 million settlement against Nationwide Insurance.

An Orlando federal jury awarded Virginia Redding $2.5 million after finding that Coloplast's NovaSilk pelvic organ prolapse mesh was defectively designed and that the company had concealed known risks from her physician, in what was the first jury verdict against Coloplast for that specific device.

A federal jury found that a snow-covered crack in a Family Video parking lot caused Rosemarie Waddy's broken ankle, awarding $2 million before a 15 percent fault finding cut her recovery to about $1.7 million.

Edelman & Thompson secured a $2 million federal settlement for Derrick Houston, a Boone County jail inmate left paralyzed in custody, then was cleared of any role in the client's later fraud and repaid the insurer $100,000.

A Sedgwick County jury awarded $1.7 million to a Wichita motorcyclist who struck city-installed bollards blocking an intersection that still showed a green traffic light, finding the City of Wichita negligent for shifting road-closure safety duties onto private applicants instead of its own traffic engineers.

Victor Bergman won a $1.215 million jury verdict for sprint car driver Doug Wolfgang, who suffered severe burns after track operators at Lakeside Speedway left him trapped in a burning cockpit for eight to ten minutes with only two undertrained firefighters on site.

A St. Louis City jury awarded Tara Straussner $1,168,829 after a city employee driving a concrete truck crossed the centerline and hit her head-on, leaving her with a permanent brain injury, though Missouri's sovereign-immunity cap held the city's payout near $517,000.

Justin Meier sustained cardiac and neurological injuries including atrial fibrillation requiring pacemaker implantation after an unknown driver caused a multi-vehicle collision in December 2023; his employer's uninsured motorist policy settled for $1 million in July 2025.

Brown & Crouppen attorney Brett Williams resolved a wrongful death claim for $1 million after a Kansas City nursing home resident on a doctor-ordered soft diet choked on a piece of fruit and died.

A St. Louis County jury awarded Ashli Friemon $1 million after a rear-end collision that left almost no visible damage to her car, with MRI evidence of early edema proving the crash caused her neck and back injuries.

A rear-end collision by a teen driver near Leawood, Kansas aggravated the plaintiff's pre-existing neck condition and required surgery; after the court struck the defense liability expert one week before trial, the case settled for $600,000.

A confidential plaintiff who suffered bilateral rotator cuff tears and surgical repair after a 2023 Jackson County collision recovered $404,642 with Horn Law Firm attorney Laurie Del Percio.

A mother, father, and infant recovered $303,000 after a 2023 right-of-way collision fractured the mother's radius and ended her ability to work as a nurse during her recovery.

A confidential plaintiff who sustained head, brain, neck, and spinal injuries when a driver made an improper lane change and sideswiped his vehicle recovered $300,000 through Horn Law Firm attorney Laurie Del Percio.

A confidential plaintiff stopped in westbound I-470 traffic was rear-ended with enough force to push his car into the concrete median, sustaining neck, chest, rib, and leg injuries; Laurie Del Percio of Horn Law Firm secured a $266,000 settlement in July 2025.

A minor passenger whose hip required surgery after a 2023 red-light collision in Jackson County recovered $252,000 at the defendant's combined policy limits.

An 82-year-old passenger fractured her right hip when the car she was riding in turned left into the path of an oncoming SUV near a St. Charles County mall, and Richard Zalasky of Brown & Crouppen settled her claim for the driver's full $250,000 policy limit.

A St. Louis jury returned a $250,000 verdict for musician Elston Taylor after a 2014 intersection collision left him with ongoing arm and hand injuries that he testified could jeopardize his voice if surgically treated.

After a speeding dump truck swerved, struck her stopped car and tipped over in front of her, Brown & Crouppen settled Mary Bourne's spinal injury claim for $245,000.

Pamela Duggan sustained serious neck and knee injuries in a December 2022 collision and eventually required knee replacement surgery before Horn Law Firm attorney Laurie Del Percio secured a $211,592 settlement in January 2026.

Brown & Crouppen recovered $200,000 for Joshua Klenke, a cyclist who fractured his collarbone after hitting a road depression left by underground plumbing work, with the payment coming from the plumbing contractor's insurer rather than the city.

Attorney Laurie Del Percio of Horn Law Firm secured a combined $162,000 settlement for driver Phillip Stonecipher and passenger Holly Friese after a left-turning driver collided with their vehicle at a Sedalia intersection where they held a green light.