Largest verdicts in Tennessee
36 independently-sourced personal-injury results from Tennessee firms, largest first. Each links to the full story — the firm, the attorneys, and the record behind the number.
Cory Watson's Jon Conlin, a co-lead lawyer on the plaintiffs' steering committee, helped drive DuPont and Chemours to a $670.7 million global settlement resolving about 3,550 C-8 water-contamination cancer and injury claims.
A Suffolk County jury awarded $200 million in October 2023 -- the largest wrongful death award in Boston history -- against R.J. Reynolds for the lung cancer death of Rita Jones, who first received free Newport cigarettes as a teenager in 1964.
A Nashville jury awarded sportscaster Erin Andrews $55 million in March 2016 after finding that West End Hotel Partners bore 49 percent of liability for a stalker who secretly filmed her through a tampered peephole at the Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt University in 2008.
A federal jury in Columbus found that DuPont's C-8 contamination caused Travis Abbott's testicular cancer and awarded him and his wife $50 million. After the trial court applied Ohio's cap on his wife's loss-of-consortium damages, the enforceable judgment came to about $40.3 million, which the Sixth Circuit later affirmed.
A Shelby County jury found two Regional One obstetric physicians negligently delayed a C-section through a prolonged labor, leaving a first-time mother's newborn with a brain injury and lifelong disability, and returned a $38,816,500 verdict.
A Los Angeles jury found a defective brake sensor in a 2004 Infiniti QX56 caused the 2012 Hollywood crash that killed a mother and her two daughters, and the $25 million verdict was later upheld on appeal.
A federal jury in Chattanooga awarded $22.2 million to a Franklin County couple after an epidural catheter placed for post-surgical pain control triggered a spinal bleed that left 62-year-old Bette Donathan permanently paralyzed from the waist down.
A Boston jury awarded $21 million to the widow of a Lynn man who died of lung cancer after taking up smoking at 13, when a salesman handed him a free pack of Marlboros, with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirming the verdict in full in 2021.
After a Spirit Truck Lines semi killed TDOT field supervisor David Younger and injured several of his crew on Interstate 40, Rocky McElhaney filed a wrongful-death and injury suit publicly seeking $18 million; the final outcome was not reported.
A Davidson County jury awarded $16,111,643 to Justin Bing, a 26-year-old Nashville marketing manager who suffered cardiac arrest, strokes, and permanent hypoxic brain damage after two physicians failed to recognize and treat a bile leak that developed following routine gallbladder surgery.
The University of the Cumberlands paid $14.1 million to the family of Grant Brace, a 20-year-old wrestler who died of exertional heatstroke in August 2020 after coaches refused him water during a grueling punishment practice and failed to summon medical help.
A Columbus federal jury awarded Kenneth Vigneron Sr. $2 million in compensatory and $10.5 million in punitive damages after finding DuPont's C-8 contamination caused his testicular cancer.
A Birmingham jury awarded $10 million to the family of Angela McCall, a 34-year-old mother of three struck and killed by a speeding driver who pulled a gun on witnesses and then fled the scene.
A Marion County jury awarded $9.4 million after a Cracker Barrel waitress refilled a customer's glass with a mix of water and commercial bleach instead of ice water.
A Lee County jury awarded the family of 20-year-old Auburn University student Hope Johnson $9 million, a county record, after urgent care doctors missed the blood clots that killed her.
A Columbus federal jury awarded David Freeman $5.1 million for testicular cancer tied to DuPont's C-8 water contamination and found the company acted with malice, adding $500,000 in punitive damages.
Donati Law served as class counsel in a federal class action that secured a $4.9 million settlement for Shelby County Jail inmates who were held beyond their lawful release dates after a botched 2016 rollout of Tyler Technologies' Odyssey court management software.
A Memphis federal jury found that FTS USA and Unitek USA willfully cheated nearly 300 cable technicians out of overtime pay by systematically shaving their reported hours, and the Sixth Circuit later affirmed the verdict in a published opinion.
A Jefferson County jury awarded $3.7 million to Tiffany Horton after a drunk driver crossed the median on Highway 280 and killed her unborn daughter Adley in a head-on crash, in what attorneys described as possibly the first Alabama jury verdict treating an unborn child as a wrongful-death victim.
A Shelby County jury awarded tanker driver Donriel Borne $3,705,000 after a Celadon tractor-trailer rear-ended him in stopped construction-zone traffic on Interstate 55, and the case later set the standard Tennessee appellate courts use to review a reduced verdict.
A federal jury awarded Andrea Jaye Mosby $3,274,857 after finding that Reaves Law Firm fired her in retaliation for reporting that it paid female attorneys less than equally qualified male colleagues.
Minner Vines secured a $3 million settlement for a survivor who was repeatedly sexually abused by Rowan County teacher and coach Andrew Zaheri beginning at age 14, in a case believed to be the largest single-victim school sexual-abuse settlement in Kentucky history.
After State Farm denied uninsured-motorist coverage and defended the driver who caused the crash, a Memphis jury held him 85 percent at fault for the collision that killed Kathryn Sadowski and injured her 90-year-old husband, Emil.
A Shelby County jury awarded Julius Malone and his wife $2,519,772 after an ASF Intermodal semi-truck merged into his lane on I-240 in Memphis, and Tennessee's noneconomic-damages cap later reduced the judgment to $1,529,772.
Tia Fitzpatrick-Young's $2 million wrongful-death suit accused Nashville's housing agency of letting crime build at the Edgehill complex, where a stray bullet from a dice-game dispute killed her husband, Glen Young Jr.; the outcome was not publicly reported.
An Ohio federal jury found DuPont liable for Carla Bartlett's kidney cancer and awarded her $1.6 million, the first of thousands of C-8 drinking water cases to reach trial.
A Nashville jury awarded $347,134 after a nursing home admitted it never administered insulin to an elderly diabetic woman during her five-day respite stay, leaving her in a hypoglycemic crisis when her family came to pick her up.
A commercial truck rolled into a driver stopped at a Nashville red light, and a Davidson County jury awarded $277,966, including $165,000 in non-economic damages, for the rotator cuff tear that followed.
A trailer hauling a hot tub broke loose on U.S. 31W and struck an oncoming Nashville driver head-on, and a Davidson County jury awarded $125,143 for soft-tissue injuries and the aggravation of pre-existing conditions.
A Memphis jury sided with in-house attorney Andrea Mosby-Meachem after her employer refused a physician-ordered telecommuting accommodation during a high-risk pregnancy, and the Sixth Circuit later affirmed the verdict in a nationally cited ADA ruling on remote work.
The Tennessee Court of Appeals upheld a Shelby County jury's $50,000 award to rear-end-collision victim Ivy Joe Clark and his wife, holding their own auto carrier responsible after the at-fault driver's insurer went insolvent.
Sheila White, the only woman at a Burlington Northern rail yard in Memphis, won a $43,500 jury verdict after being transferred to harder physical work and suspended without pay for reporting sexual harassment by her supervisor, a case attorney Don Donati ultimately argued to a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court victory in 2006.
The Tennessee Supreme Court held that an intrusion-upon-seclusion claim does not abate upon the plaintiff's death, allowing the family of a cognitively impaired nursing home resident to pursue her privacy lawsuit after she passed away.
Donati Law attorneys Brice Timmons and Melissa Stewart won a permanent injunction striking down Tennessee's Adult Entertainment Act on First Amendment grounds, the first federal court ruling to find a state drag-performance ban unconstitutional.
A federal civil rights lawsuit settled confidentially in September 2017 after surveillance footage showed Cheatham County deputies deploying a Taser against 18-year-old Jordan Norris at least four times while he sat immobilized in a jail restraint chair.
The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled in November 2017 that personal injury plaintiffs may present full, undiscounted medical bills as evidence of reasonable expenses, preserving the collateral source rule for injured Tennesseans.