In the coming days Courtroom View Network will kick off 2023 with gavel-to-gavel video coverage of some of the first major civil trials of the new year, including a medical malpractice case in Las Vegas, a trucking injury trial in Dallas, and a Monsanto Roundup herbicide trial in Missouri.
However before diving into what’s ahead, we wanted to look back and present the Top 10 Most Impressive Plaintiff Verdicts that CVN covered in 2022. Last year saw CVN’s cameras present in state courts all over the country providing commercial-free, gavel-to-gavel video coverage of real-world civil trials that matter to the professional community.
CVN is the only news organization anywhere dedicated solely to gavel-to-gavel video coverage of civil trials, and in 2022 that coverage ranged widely from national bellwether product liability trials to “everyday” negligence trials. What they all have in common are some of the top trial attorneys in the country, which means CVN subscribers can see firsthand how the very best advocates handle themselves in real courtrooms in high-stakes cases.
This list is not merely a ranking of large jury awards. We took verdict amounts into consideration along with potentially challenging facts in a case, the parties and attorneys involved and potential impact on related litigation to choose the top 10 most impressive trials CVN covered in 2022 resulting in plaintiff verdicts.
With a monthly or annual subscription to CVN’s online trial video library, viewers get unlimited on-demand access to all of these trials and hundreds more. Make sure to check out our top 10 plaintiff picks from 2021 and other years past.
Also stay tuned for our list of Top 10 Most Impressive Defense Verdicts that CVN covered in 2022, coming soon!
Happy new year!
***
#1 - Goff v. Charter Communications (Dallas County, TX)
$7.3 billion+ awarded to family of elderly woman murdered in her home by a Spectrum cable technician
Plaintiff attorneys: Ray Khirallah (pictured), Chris Hamilton - Hamilton Wingo LLP
Link to video of the full trial:
https://cvn.com/proceedings/goff-v-charter-communications-et-al-trial-2022-06-06
Why it made the list:
This ground shaking verdict from July out of Dallas is among the largest delivered in any civil trial anywhere in the country in recent years, and it ranks as the most impressive plaintiff verdict that CVN covered in 2022. It consists of $375 million in compensatory damages and $7 billion in punitive damages.
The family of Betty Thomas accused Charter, also known as Spectrum, of negligently hiring former employee Roy James Holden, who stabbed Thomas to death after attempting to rob her the day after performing service work on her telephone line. Holden was not on the clock during the incident, but he did arrive in his company van wearing his Spectrum uniform and stabbed Thomas to death using a company-issued knife.
Holden is serving a life sentence for murder and Charter, represented by one of the top national defense firms in the country, maintained he bore sole responsibility for the killing. However the attorneys at Hamilton Wingo successfully convinced jurors that Charter failed to perform an adequate background check on Holden, which they argued would have shown he largely fabricated his work history, and that requests to supervisors for more work hours and personal loans should have raised red flags that he posed a danger to customers.
Despite Charter’s pledge to appeal the verdict, attorney Ray Khirallah said in a statement issued after the trial that the award would be a warning to the public by highlighting “…how vulnerable Charter Spectrum customers remain today at the hands of a company that appears not to care about public safety.”
Read more via the CVN News Blog
***
#2 - Hill v. Ford Motor Company (Gwinnett County, GA)
$1.7+ billion verdict in roof crush trial sends shockwaves through auto industry
Plaintiff attorneys: Jim Butler (pictured), Sarah Andrews, Kim McCallister, Daniel Philyaw, Nick Giles - Butler Prather LLP, Gerald Davidson - Mahaffey Pickens Tucker LLP, Michael Terry, Laurie Taylor - Bondurant Mixson & Elmore LLP
Link to video of the full trial:
https://cvn.com/proceedings/hill-v-ford-motor-co-trial-2022-08-01
Why it made the list:
This verdict from August is the largest product liability verdict in Georgia history, and it earns the second spot on CVN’s list of most impressive verdicts of 2022. A retrial after an earlier mistrial, the case was brought on behalf of Melvin and Voncile Hill, who died when a tire on their 2002 Ford Super Duty F-250 Crew Cab pickup truck separated, causing it to roll over and crush the vehicle's roof.
Before the trial Ford had settled dozens of lawsuits involving roof collapses in Super Duty pickups made between 1999 and 2016. As one of the few such cases to make it in front of a jury the trial received close scrutiny from plaintiff and defense attorneys. The jury awarded $1.7 billion in punitive damages in addition to roughly $24 million in compensatory damages.
At trial Ford argued the catastrophic nature of this specific crash caused the failure and not a design defect, and on appeal the company claimed they were unfairly constrained by sanctions related to the previous mistrial.
After the trial, lead plaintiff attorney Jim Butler said the massive punitive verdict would send an important message to the public about the safety of vehicles that remain on the roads today.
“An award of punitive damages to hopefully warn people riding around in the millions of those trucks Ford sold was the reason the Hill family insisted on a verdict,” he said.
Read more via the CVN News Blog
***
#3 - Fontaine v. Philip Morris (Middlesex County, MA)
$1 billion punitive award handed down in tobacco wrongful death lawsuit
Plaintiff attorneys: Randy Rosenblum (pictured) - Dolan Dobrinsky Rosenblum LLP, Kevin Donovan - Rubenstein Law
Link to video of the full trial:
https://cvn.com/proceedings/wallace-v-philip-morris-trial-2022-08-15
Why it made the list:
In September a Massachusetts jury delivered one of the largest verdicts in a tobacco-related lawsuit anywhere in the country in the last decade, and the 14-day trial in Woburn takes the number three spot on CVN’s list of most impressive plaintiff verdicts of 2022.
The verdict consists of roughly $8 million in compensatory damages and $1 billion in punitive damages, after jurors found against Philip Morris on negligent design, breach of warranty, fraud, and conspiracy claims among others while also clearing grocery chain Demoulas, a co-defendant in the case.
Barbara Fontaine began smoking as a teenager and continued for more than 40 years, favoring Philip Morris’ Parliament and Marlboro brands. Her husband, Armand Fontaine, contended that the tobacco giant is responsible for her fatal lung cancer by placing dangerous, addictive cigarettes on the market and then working for decades to conceal those dangers.
Fontaine’s attorneys faced off against one of the largest national defense firms that frequently represents tobacco companies at trial and also had to navigate the challenges of a second non-tobacco defendant in the case, making this the most impressive out of the many tobacco plaintiff verdicts that CVN covered in 2022 and our choice for third overall.
Read more via the CVN News Blog
***
#4 - Trevino v. Davol Inc. (Providence, RI)
$4.8 million awarded in nation’s 1st state court hernia mesh trial
Plaintiff attorneys: Jonathan Orent (pictured), Dennis Costigan, Annie Kouba - Motley Rice LLC
Link to video of the full trial:
https://cvn.com/proceedings/rhodeislandmeshtbd-trial-2022-07-18
Why it made the list:
In late August a Rhode Island jury narrowly avoided a deadlock following lengthy deliberations to deliver the first verdict in a state court lawsuit involving injuries supposedly sustained from a hernia mesh implant.
Plaintiff Paul Trevino sued Davol Inc., a division of medical device company C.R. Bard Inc. after receiving the Ventralex brand mesh to treat a hernia that developed after surgery for an abdominal injury. The trial was closely watched, since despite numerous pelvic mesh implant trials taking place over the last decade, only a small handful of hernia mesh cases proceeded to trial - and those were all in federal court.
Trevino’s lawyers claimed Bard manufactured the Ventralex patch with a type of plastic resin that causes an inflammatory reaction in human tissue, and that the patch “buckled” inside Trevino’s abdomen and had to be removed in a subsequent surgery. Plaintiffs in the many hernia mesh lawsuits pending throughout the country claim the devices left them beleaguered with side effects ranging from chronic pain to infections to nerve damage
Thousands of similar hernia mesh lawsuits involving the Ventralex and other devices remain pending in both state and federal courts.
Read more via the CVN News Blog
***
#5: Allison v. Monsanto (Seattle, WA)
$275 million verdict over school’s contamination with toxic PCB “forever chemicals”
Plaintiff attorneys: Rick Friedman (pictured), Henry Jones - Friedman Rubin, Nick Rowley, Courtney Rowley - Trial Lawyers For Justice
Link to video of the full trial:
https://cvn.com/proceedings/allison-v-monsanto-co-trial-2022-08-05
Why it made the list:
Hundreds of students, parents and teachers have sued Bayer-owned Monsanto over claims that exposure to PCB chemicals at a school in Monroe County, Washington caused a range of neurological injuries.
Polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, are toxic and extremely long-lasting chemicals used in a wide variety of industrial products. The plaintiffs in this trial and others claimed PCBs in outdated light fixtures and building caulk at the Sky Valley Educational Center created dangerous conditions at the school.
Five of the six trials to date resulted in plaintiff verdicts (with one mistrial due to a hung jury), but this award of $55 million in compensatory damages and $220 million in punitive damages is by far the largest.
Monsanto argued that while PCBs were present at school, they were never found in sufficient amounts to cause the injuries the plaintiffs allegedly sustained. Additional trials related to Sky Valley PCB contamination are scheduled throughout 2023.
Read more via the CVN News Blog
***
#6: Roybal v. Louis Bellomo & SHAC LLC (Las Vegas, NV)
$14 million+ awarded to cyclist struck by SUV in zero offer case
Plaintiff attorneys: Logan Geordan (pictured), Sean Claggett - Claggett & Sykes Law Firm
Link to video of the full trial:
https://cvn.com/proceedings/thunder-roybal-v-louis-bellomo-trial-2022-05-12
Why it made the list:
In June a Nevada state court jury awarded more than $14 million to a cyclist struck by a driver for a Las Vegas gentleman’s club, after the defense refused to consider any settlement until making an offer of $500,000 midway through the trial.
Plaintiff Thunder Roybal sued Louis Bellomo and SHAC LLC, which operates the Sapphire Gentleman’s Club, following a 2016 accident that resulted in four major surgeries to treat crush injuries to his shoulder, neck and chest.
The defense argued Roybal’s supposedly unsafe behavior caused the accident, that not all his surgeries were directly related to injuries sustained in the crash and suggested he may have staged the accident, but the jury rejected those positions and assigned Roybal zero liability for the accident.
Attorney Sean Claggett, who represented the plaintiff, told CVN after the trial the award surpassed the $12 million that his pre-trial focus groups and data analysis predicted.
Read more via the CVN News Blog
***
#7: Adams v. Flower Mound Hospital Partners (Dallas, TX)
$10 million+ verdict for paralyzed patient beats hospital’s $450K offer
Plaintiff attorneys: Michael Lyons (pictured), Chris Carr, Michael Fechner - Lyons & Simmons LLP
Link to video of the full trial:
https://cvn.com/proceedings/adams-v-vu-et-al-trial-2022-11-29
Why it made the list:
In December a Texas state court jury returned a verdict of roughly $10.2 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit filed by a woman and her husband alleging that a hospital’s unnecessary delays in treating bleeding around her spine caused permanent paralysis.
The Dallas County jury returned their verdict shortly after hearing closing arguments in the trial that began on November 29. The award consists of approximately $4.5 million in economic damages for plaintiffs Jessie Adams and her husband Richard and $5.6 million in non-economic damages, though a statutory cap on non-economic medical malpractice damages in Texas limits that amount to $500,000 for the couple, resulting in a total collectible award of roughly $5 million.
The Adams sued Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Flower Mound after Jessie was taken to the emergency room in 2019 with an epidural hematoma following a steroid and pain relief injection in her back at a nearby clinic.
Besides far-surpassing the hospital’s settlement offer, the award stands out because medical malpractice cases involving emergency treatment in Texas require meeting a stringent standard of “willful and wonton negligence” to establish liability for the healthcare provider.
Read more via the CVN News Blog
***
#8: Estate of Jose Ruvalcaba v. City of Victorville (San Bernardino County, CA)
$33.8 million+ verdict for family of man killed by city workers beats out $3.5 million settlement offer
Plaintiff attorneys: Arash Homampour (pictured), Ronan Duggan - The Homampour Law Firm
Link to video of the full trial:
https://cvn.com/proceedings/estate-of-jose-ruvalcabra-v-city-of-victorville-trial-2022-09-29
Why it made the list:
All of the trials on this list involved difficult questions of liability, but trials limited to damages only present sensitive and subjective issues for jurors to decide like the monetary worth of a personal relationship or of a human life itself.
Those were the questions attorney Arash Homampour had to navigate in this California state court trial that ended in a $33.85 million verdict in October for the family of a man who was killed after an altercation with three city street workers who struck him in the head with a shovel.
Jose Ruvalcaba died in 2018 after an incident wherein police initially alleged he assaulted three workers painting roadway lines, however during the trial attorneys for his children argued the workers used unnecessary force against an unarmed individual.
The defense characterized Ruvalcaba as a transient drug user who did not have a close relationship with his children - two issues that Homampour had to carefully frame for jurors.
“The jury disagreed and saw the true value of this amazing father’s love, the staggering loss to these young women and how one only needed to look at the beauty in and from them to see who he was,” Homampour told CVN after the trial.
Read more via the CVN News Blog
***
#9: Crohan v. Furman, et al (Hillsborough County, Florida)
$68.6 million medical malpractice verdict over woman’s sodium balance-induced brain damage
Plaintiff attorney: Michael Trentalange - Trentalange & Kelley PA
Link to video of the full trial:
https://cvn.com/proceedings/crohan-et-al-v-university-community-hospital-inc-et-al-other-2022-10-18
Why it made the list:
In November a Florida jury awarded more than $68.6 million to a woman after finding four doctors responsible for the catastrophic brain damage and other injuries she suffered following an electrolyte imbalance.
The Florida State 13th Circuit Court jury, in Hillsborough County, deliberated roughly six hours before reaching its verdict at trial over the lifelong brain damage Miranda Crohan suffered following a 2017 collapse and bout of severe hyponatremia, or low blood sodium.
Crohan, who suffered from diabetes insipidus, an uncommon condition that can cause an imbalance of fluids in the body, had been found unresponsive by a roommate and taken to a Tampa-area hospital where she was found to have a severe electrolyte imbalance. In the hours and days that followed she suffered a range of complications and was left with profound brain damage that will require lifelong care.
Read more via the CVN News Blog
***
#10: Trokey v. Ford Motor Company (St. Louis, MO)
St. Louis jury returns exact amount ($20 million) requested in asbestos trial
Plaintiff attorneys: Daniel Blouin (pictured), Philip Proud - Simmons Hanly Conroy
Link to video of the full trial:
https://cvn.com/proceedings/william-trokey-et-al-v-aw-chesterton-company-et-al-trial-2022-02-28
Why it made the list:
In March a Missouri state court jury returned a $20 million verdict in favor of a former mechanic who claimed he developed fatal cancer due to exposure to asbestos in Ford Motor Company’s automotive brakes in the 1960’s. The jury returned their verdict the same day they heard closing arguments, awarding $10 million to William “Bill” Trokey and $10 million to his wife Cathy Trokey.
The Trokeys’ attorneys argued that Bill Trokey developed mesothelioma, a fatal form of cancer frequently linked with asbestos exposure, due to his work on Ford’s “drum brakes” as a part-time mechanic from 1960 to 1968. Ford maintained his exposure was too limited to definitively link to his cancer, and that asbestos from other sources could also have caused his illness.
The $20 million award is the same amount that plaintiffs’ attorney Daniel P. Blouin asked for during his closing argument, according to Courtroom View Network's webcast of the trial.
Read more via the CVN News Blog
***
Thanks for reading! Make sure to keep an eye out for our upcoming list of top 10 defense picks, and sign up for a no-contract monthly or annual CVN video library subscription today for instant, unlimited access to all of these trials and hundreds more.
E-mail David Siegel at dsiegel@cvn.com
