Largest verdicts in New Jersey

Michael Maggiano of Maggiano, DiGirolamo & Lizzi served on the plaintiffs' trial team that secured a $101 million settlement for the families of four workers killed and dozens injured when the Tropicana Casino Resort's under-construction parking garage collapsed in Atlantic City in 2003, the largest construction-accident settlement in U.S. history at the time.

A Massachusetts jury returned a $1 billion punitive verdict against Philip Morris in 2022 over the lung cancer death of Barbara Fontaine, a case handled in part by Rubenstein Law attorney Kevin Donovan; the punitive award was later reduced to $56 million, a figure the state Supreme Judicial Court upheld in April 2026.

A Middlesex County jury awarded Joseph Reppucci and his wife $20.7 million after finding that R.J. Reynolds and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. bore responsibility for the oropharyngeal cancer he developed following decades of smoking their cigarettes.

When improperly installed scaffolding collapsed at a Bordentown, New Jersey construction site and injured four workers, John Ratkowitz of Ginarte Gonzalez and Winograd secured a $19.675 million multi-party settlement that awarded $15 million to Luis Yanza, who sustained a traumatic brain injury leaving him with permanent, severe cognitive deficits.

A 10-year-old girl lost two toes and underwent 22 surgeries after her foot was pulled into a decades-old, poorly maintained Macy's escalator at Garden State Plaza in Paramus; three years later, Macy's and ThyssenKrupp Elevator settled for $15 million.

A Bergen County jury awarded $9.5 million to sisters Gina and Jamie Franzino after a 31-foot Boston Whaler collided with their small skiff in the Manasquan Inlet on Memorial Day weekend 2009, killing a third passenger and leaving both women with severe injuries.

A federal jury in the Southern District of New York awarded $8.67 million to Daniel Rivera, a construction worker who suffered permanent loss of use of his left arm and vision loss after an unsecured metal ladder at a Yonkers job site contacted a live electrical wire in August 2015.

Jose Criollo, 46, fell from an unguarded scaffolding tower after airborne debris struck his eyes, sustaining a complete spinal cord injury at T12-T13 that left him permanently paraplegic; the case settled for $8.225 million against the general contractor and his employer combined.

A Miami-Dade jury awarded $6 million to the widow of Oscar Cabrera, a construction worker killed in February 2017 when a remotely operated Metromover train struck a boom lift near the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. station while he was working on the Brightline terminal project.

A woman who slipped on grease in a common area shared by her employer and LAVO, a nightclub-restaurant then owned by a Madison Square Garden Entertainment subsidiary, suffered neck and back injuries requiring multiple surgeries and settled her case for $5.3 million in 2023.

A Miami-Dade jury returned a $4,877,775 verdict for Juan Del Valle, who slipped on water from a leaking produce refrigeration unit at a Winn-Dixie in Miami Lakes and underwent three spinal surgeries, leaving him with permanent hardware in his spine.

Christopher DiGirolamo secured $4.4 million for a Wayne boy who suffered a traumatic brain injury and partial paralysis when a drunk driver rear-ended his family's minivan, with $950,000 coming from the bar that served the driver under New Jersey's Dram Shop Act.

After falling from a Sea Girt rooftop without a safety harness on May 4, 2017, and sustaining a complete cervical spinal cord injury that left him permanently quadriplegic, Roberto Carlos Bolanos settled his negligence claim against the general contractor for $4 million.

A New Jersey delivery worker received $2,225,000 in 2018 after a Ryder rental truck's lift gate collapsed mid-use, causing a fall that required multiple surgeries and left him with permanent physical restrictions.

A construction worker fell through a failed metal grate inside the Central Railroad of NJ Terminal building at Liberty State Park in 2015, suffering bone fractures and permanent spinal injuries that John Ratkowitz of Ginarte Gonzalez & Winograd resolved for $2 million in 2024.

An Essex County jury awarded $1,800,000 to a plumber who fell from unguarded construction stairs while carrying a bathtub, finding Hutchgrove Enterprises liable as the de facto general contractor on the project.

Christopher DiGirolamo secured a $1.62 million settlement for Carol Olsen, a 59-year-old Midland Park woman whose right thumb was bitten off by a fostered pit bull in Mahwah, in the case Olsen v. Eleventh Hour Rescue.

Christopher DiGirolamo secured a $900,000 settlement for the family of a 26-year-old college student who was struck and killed by a car while crossing at a marked crosswalk in New Jersey.

Michael Maggiano filed a $50 million suit on behalf of a Korean-American family whose 93-year-old mother's body was swapped into the wrong casket, with the error discovered as her casket was being lowered into a grave in November 2021.

Michael Maggiano filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of patients exposed to HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C after investigators found that HealthPlus Surgery Center in Saddle Brook, NJ had failed to properly sterilize surgical instruments and clean operating rooms between procedures.