Largest verdicts in Pennsylvania

A Philadelphia jury awarded $8 billion in punitive damages against Johnson & Johnson over Risperdal and male breast growth in a young patient, an award the trial judge later reduced to $6.8 million.

A Philadelphia jury found that Monsanto failed to warn that Roundup could cause cancer and awarded John McKivison $2.25 billion. The trial judge later reduced the award to $400 million.

Anapol Weiss shareholder Kristen Gibbons Feden helped secure $1.6 billion in default verdicts for 104 women sexually abused as children by former Long Island pediatrician Stuart Copperman, one of the largest cumulative civil awards against a single individual in U.S. history.

Saltz Mongeluzzi and Bendesky joined the plaintiffs' leadership team that secured a $1.2 billion settlement for the families and survivors of 98 people killed when Champlain Towers South collapsed in Surfside, Florida on June 24, 2021 -- the largest construction-disaster settlement in U.S. history.

Sol Weiss and Larry Coben of Anapol Weiss served as co-lead class counsel in the landmark NFL concussion multidistrict litigation, securing a settlement valued at nearly $1 billion for thousands of retired players diagnosed with serious neurological conditions.

After Amtrak Train 188 derailed in Philadelphia in May 2015, killing eight and injuring more than 200, Kline & Specter's Thomas R. Kline led the plaintiffs' negotiations that produced a $265 million settlement fund for the victims.

Robert Mongeluzzi helped secure a $265 million federal settlement on behalf of more than 125 claimants injured or killed when Amtrak Train 188 derailed at 106 mph on a Philadelphia curve in May 2015.

A Pennsylvania-record $227 million settlement resolved claims brought by 19 victims of the June 2013 Center City building collapse, in which an improperly braced wall fell during demolition and crushed the adjoining Salvation Army thrift store, killing seven people.

When a demolition project at 22nd and Market Streets sent a four-story brick wall crashing through a Salvation Army thrift store in June 2013, seven people were killed; after nearly six months of civil trial, the defendants settled for $227 million, the largest personal-injury settlement in Pennsylvania history.

A Philadelphia jury found the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania liable for the brain injury a newborn suffered when staff delayed a cesarean section, a $182.7 million verdict that grew to a molded judgment of about $207.6 million, the largest medical malpractice award in Pennsylvania history. Kline & Specter argued and won the appeal, where the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed the full $207.6 million judgment in July 2025.

Sol Weiss served as co-lead counsel in a class action that secured $206 million in damages against two former Luzerne County judges who accepted $2.8 million in kickbacks to funnel hundreds of children into private juvenile detention facilities.

A Philadelphia jury awarded Ernest Caranci $175 million after finding that decades of Roundup use caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that Monsanto failed to warn of the risk. Kline & Specter tried the case, the first Roundup trial in Philadelphia, and the verdict was later upheld on appeal.

A $160 million settlement -- the largest pre-verdict settlement in Pennsylvania court history -- resolved claims against U-Haul after an overfilled propane tank exploded at a North Philadelphia food truck, killing a mother and her teenage daughter and severely burning three others.

A federal jury in Nevada found Ford's pickup parking brake defective and held that the company should have warned owners, returning a verdict near $153 million after three-year-old Walter White was killed by a truck that rolled in the family driveway. Shanin Specter of Kline & Specter tried the case.

A Philadelphia jury found that Ethicon negligently designed the TVT-O pelvic mesh implanted in Susan McFarland of Altoona and returned $120 million, which Kline & Specter called the largest pelvic-mesh verdict reached to that point.

An Allegheny County jury found West Penn Power negligent for the splice failure that dropped a live 7,200-volt line on Carrie Goretzka in her own backyard. The 2012 verdict reached $109 million. The utility later paid a reported $105 million to drop its appeal.

After a months-long non-jury trial in Butler County, a judge found Ernst and Young liable for accounting negligence and misrepresentation in its handling of bankruptcy records tied to a long-running Ponzi scheme, awarding Barbara Reilly $102,718,989, a verdict the Pennsylvania Superior Court later vacated and sent back for a new trial.

Four construction workers were killed and more than 30 injured when five floors of a parking garage under construction at the Tropicana Casino Resort in Atlantic City collapsed in October 2003, leading to what attorneys described as the largest construction-accident settlement in U.S. history at that time.

After an unbraced brick wall toppled during a 2013 Center City demolition and crushed a Salvation Army store, Kline & Specter's Andrew J. Stern secured a $95.6 million award for survivor Mariya Plekan, the largest individual share of a record $227 million settlement.

A Philadelphia jury awarded $85 million to a University of Pennsylvania medical student left disabled after falling 18 feet into an open Trigen Energy manhole at 19th and Walnut Streets, the largest personal injury verdict in the United States for 2008.

A Philadelphia jury returned $80 million, including $50 million in punitive damages, against Johnson & Johnson and its Ethicon unit after finding the Prolift transvaginal mesh implanted in Patricia Mesigian was defective and inadequately labeled.

A Philadelphia jury found Pottstown Memorial Medical Center liable for a newborn's severe spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy after the hospital's outdated, unmaintained ultrasound equipment led a physician to incorrectly declare the baby dead, delaying an emergency cesarean section by 81 minutes.

A Philadelphia jury awarded William Melissen $78 million, including $75 million in punitive damages, after finding that Monsanto's Roundup weed killer was a cause of his non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Kline & Specter, with co-counsel Arnold & Itkin, tried the case, the sixth Roundup trial heard by a Philadelphia jury and the fourth to go against the company.

A Philadelphia jury awarded $75.6 million to Joseph Tuski, a highway construction flagman left quadriplegic when a drunk driver who had just served himself alcohol at the bar he managed struck him at 40 mph and fled the scene.

Saltz Mongeluzzi Bendesky secured a $65 million class-action settlement against Lehigh Valley Health Network after a 2023 BlackCat ransomware attack exposed intimate medical images and private health records of more than 134,000 patients.

Joel Feller and Matt Casey of Ross Feller Casey represented seven of the 26 survivors who reached a global civil settlement with Penn State University totaling $59.7 million, the largest single-firm contingent in the proceedings.

A Philadelphia jury awarded more than $51 million against SEPTA in December 1999, after a four-year-old boy's foot was severed in a subway escalator and the transit agency was caught mid-trial concealing maintenance records. Because Pennsylvania's sovereign immunity cap limited the tort damages and SEPTA moved to appeal, the family settled for $7.4 million in January 2000.

Feldman Shepherd secured a combined $50 million settlement from IKEA on behalf of three families whose toddler sons were fatally crushed by MALM dressers, a result that preceded a nationwide recall of approximately 29 million chests and dressers.

A Philadelphia jury awarded $46.5 million, including $38.5 million in punitive damages, against U.S. Security Associates after its guards fled rather than warn workers during the 2010 Kraft plant shooting that killed Tanya Wilson and LaTonya Brown. Kline & Specter's Shanin Specter, Dominic Guerrini, and Patrick Fitzgerald tried the case.

Alan Feldman of Feldman Shepherd secured a $46 million settlement against IKEA on behalf of the family of a 2-year-old boy crushed by a MALM dresser in California, reported at the time as the largest child wrongful-death settlement in U.S. history.

A Philadelphia jury returned a $45 million verdict in favor of Tamara Breeden, a mentally disabled woman who was confined, abused, and robbed of her Social Security benefits for more than a decade by Linda Ann Weston and two associates.

A Philadelphia jury awarded Andrea Tate $44.1 million after the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania stopped monitoring her blood-clotting levels mid-treatment, allowing heparin to build to a dangerous concentration that caused a massive brain hemorrhage following routine tumor surgery.

Ross Feller Casey secured a $32.5 million settlement against Reading Hospital after its labor and delivery team failed to recognize signs of intra-amniotic infection and delayed a C-section, leaving a boy born in 2018 with permanent hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy.

Robert Mongeluzzi served as co-lead counsel in the $29.5 million global settlement resolving claims for three women who drowned and 40 patrons injured when the 91-year-old Pier 34 buckled beneath Club Heat nightclub and dropped into the Delaware River on May 18, 2000.

Robert Mongeluzzi secured a then-record $26.55 million Philadelphia County settlement for David Williams, a TruGreen lawn-care worker who was left quadriplegic after a company truck rolled over on a Clinton County highway due to a bald tire the defendants had failed to replace even after their own inspection flagged it.

Feldman Shepherd secured a $26.1 million settlement for the family of a man killed and a husband left with a traumatic brain injury when a tractor-trailer hit stopped traffic on Interstate 80 at more than 70 mph.

A York County jury awarded James Spangler a record $23.87 million after neurosurgeon Dr. Joseph Krzeminski inserted a screw into his spinal cord during a routine back procedure at WellSpan York Hospital and kept operating despite active monitoring alarms signaling catastrophic nerve damage.

A Chester County jury awarded $18 million (later raised to $19.16 million by the trial judge) after a certified nurse practitioner twice examined a 22-year-old and dismissed her breast lump without ordering imaging, delaying a cancer diagnosis by nine months and forcing a bilateral mastectomy instead of a lumpectomy.

A Philadelphia jury held J.B. Hunt Transport 40% liable for catastrophic injuries to a roadside pedestrian after finding the freight broker failed to screen its independent-contractor driver, who was operating with a blood alcohol level more than four times the commercial legal limit.

A Bucks County jury awarded just over $14 million after a Pennsbury School District bus jumped a curb and crushed a teenage student, costing her a leg. Thomas Kline of Kline & Specter tried the case. Pennsylvania's tort-claims cap later cut the recovery to $500,000.

A Philadelphia civil jury awarded Khanefah Boozer $10 million after finding that Officer Ryan Waltman maliciously prosecuted him for a shooting Boozer did not commit, leaving him imprisoned for more than three years.

Ross Feller Casey secured a $6.25 million settlement for Terrance Lewis, a Philadelphia man who spent more than 21 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of a 1996 West Philadelphia murder based on withheld exculpatory evidence.

Victor Pribanic won a $3.25 million jury verdict, the largest in McKean County history and the first plaintiff win in a county med-mal trial since 2000, for a 66-year-old school janitor whose emergency room physicians and primary care doctor missed a foot abscess until it required a below-knee amputation.

A federal jury in Pittsburgh awarded $3.22 million to Ronnie Kirkpatrick and his wife after GEICO refused to pay the full underinsured motorist benefits they were owed following a 2012 crash in Butler County, Pennsylvania.

A Philadelphia jury awarded $995,200 after finding Sesame Place 68 percent liable for a visitor's severe ankle fracture-dislocation caused by rubber aquatic shoes the park actively sold and never banned from its waterslide.

Victor Pribanic secured a confidential settlement for the family of James Yingling III, a 35-year-old father of five who died after his Saturn Ion lost steering and braking when a defective GM ignition switch cut power to critical safety systems.