Electric Shock Settlement: Typical Ranges and Deciding Factors

Electric shock settlement amounts range from roughly $100,000 for cases involving straightforward burns to tens of millions of dollars when injuries include amputation, brain damage, or death. No agency or private database publishes true averages, so any single “average” figure is an estimate drawn from reported outcomes.¹ What the reported results do show clearly is which factors move a case toward the low end of that range and which push it toward the high end.

Typical Settlement Ranges by Injury Severity

Cases built around relatively contained burn injuries have settled in the $100,000 to $500,000 range. Cases involving amputations, permanent nerve damage, severe brain injury, or death regularly reach into the millions, and the largest reported results sit well into eight and nine figures.²

Severity is the single clearest predictor because the lifetime costs scale with it. Electrical injuries are medically unusual: visible skin burns often mask much worse internal damage, and survivors face high rates of amputation (15% to 39% in one large study) and persistent neuropathy (11% to 60%).³ Long-term complications, including memory problems, chronic pain, personality changes, and depression, can take one to five years to fully surface.⁴ That slow manifestation complicates both the medical picture and the calculation of future damages, which is why severity-driven cases tend to settle higher once the full extent is documented.

Notable Verdicts and Settlements

Reported results give the clearest picture of what the dollar figures actually look like.

$109 million (Pennsylvania): In Goretzka v. West Penn Power Co., a jury awarded $48 million in compensatory damages and $61 million in punitive damages after an electrocution. The punitive figure was calculated as one-quarter of the utility company’s retained earnings.⁵
$51.3 million (California, 2023): A jury returned this verdict after construction worker Kelley Maggio suffered severe electrical burns, traumatic brain injury, and heart complications while working at a solar plant near Paso Robles. The general contractor and solar panel manufacturer First Solar Corporation were held liable after a six-year legal battle. The defense had offered no more than $6 million before trial.⁶
$41.5 million (Texas, 2018): Awarded to a construction worker who sustained severe electrical injuries from unsafe conditions on a job site.⁷
$21.7 million (Nevada, 2023): A jury awarded this amount to Nissim Morami, a guest at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas who suffered an electric shock from a hotel iron. The injury led to complex regional pain syndrome and ultimately a below-knee amputation of his right leg.⁸
$15.6 million (Texas, 2022): Three plumbers repositioning a flagpole at an apartment complex contacted overhead power lines. One died, and two others suffered serious injuries. The deceased worker’s family received $10.5 million, and the two survivors split roughly $5 million.⁹
$15.5 million (Pennsylvania, 2024): In Feldman v. CP Acquisitions 25 LP, a worker was shocked during construction of an apartment complex in Bala Cynwyd. The Superior Court upheld the verdict on appeal in September 2024.¹⁰
$9.1 million (Pennsylvania): In Daniel Eife v. Eight Defendants, a loader operator suffered severe burns and amputations after his equipment’s boom contacted uninsulated power lines maintained by PECO Energy. Eight defendants, including PECO, the loader manufacturer, and several repair and sales companies, collectively paid $9.1 million.¹¹
$7.7 million (South Carolina, 2022): A maintenance worker died after contacting an electrical current while using a pole saw. His family received $5 million, and an injured coworker received $2.7 million.⁹
$6 million (2018): A confidential settlement in a pool electrocution case where a 17-year-old lifeguard died after a short in the pump motor energized the water. The pool’s wiring violated the National Electrical Code, and the homeowners association had been warned the pump was dangerous.¹²
$5 million (New York): A 32-year-old construction laborer struck an unmarked, concealed electrical box with a jackhammer during excavation. He suffered second-degree electrical burns, disc herniations in his cervical and lumbar spine, and tears to both shoulders, and has not returned to work.¹³
$2.87 million (Missouri, 2024): In Bassett v. Cable America Missouri, LLC, a 68-year-old man was shocked when his tractor struck a hidden guy wire while mowing in St. Robert, Missouri. He required multiple surgeries and incurred nearly $600,000 in medical bills. The jury found Cable America 80% responsible and the plaintiff 20% at fault, reducing his recovery accordingly.¹⁴

What Drives the Dollar Figure

Medical Costs and Lost Earnings

Economic damages cover past and future medical bills, rehabilitation, lost wages during recovery, and reduced future earning capacity.¹⁵ Lost-earnings projections carry unusual weight in electrical cases because survivors are roughly half as likely to be employed two years after their injury compared to people who suffered other types of burns.³ Prosthetic replacements over a lifetime, burn-unit care, and neuropsychological treatment can push the medical component of a claim well into the millions on its own.

Pain, Suffering, and Quality of Life

Non-economic damages cover physical pain, emotional distress, disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life. Research shows that 78% of electrical injury survivors meet the criteria for a psychiatric diagnosis, and they are 14 times more likely to have one than people who suffered other types of trauma.⁴ Those documented psychological consequences typically become a significant piece of the non-economic award.

Strength of the Liability Case

The clearer the evidence that a specific party caused the hazard through negligence, the higher the likely payout. Cases where a defendant violated a known safety standard or ignored prior warnings tend to produce the largest results. In the Eife case, OSHA standards prohibited operating boom equipment within 10 feet of power lines, and the plaintiff’s employer had trained him in ways inconsistent with those rules.¹¹ When multiple defendants share blame, the total pool tends to grow because each party’s insurer contributes.

Who Can Be Held Liable

The size of a settlement often depends on how many pockets are on the hook. Electric shock claims target whoever created or failed to address the hazard:

Property owners, under premises liability, when they knew or should have known about an electrical hazard (exposed wiring, a faulty pool pump) and failed to fix it.¹⁵
Utility companies, for failures in maintaining lines, substations, and equipment. Courts have held utilities liable even where they met National Electrical Safety Code standards if additional negligence can be shown.¹⁶
Manufacturers, distributors, and retailers, on a product liability theory, when a defective appliance, tool, or piece of equipment caused the shock.¹⁵
Contractors, subcontractors, and electricians, for faulty work or safety-standard failures.
Third parties on a job site, when the injured person is an employee. Workers’ compensation is normally the only remedy against the employer itself, but a separate lawsuit against an equipment manufacturer or another contractor can run alongside the comp claim.¹⁷

That workers’ comp distinction matters for the number. Comp pays medical benefits and partial wage replacement on a no-fault basis, but the payout is typically much smaller than what a personal injury lawsuit can produce. A viable third-party claim is often what pushes a workplace case from a modest comp award into the settlement ranges listed above.

For fatal cases, wrongful death claims let the family or estate recover funeral expenses, lost financial support, and loss of companionship.¹⁸ Some states also allow a survival action for the suffering the victim experienced before death.¹⁹

What Can Shrink or Eliminate Your Recovery

Defendants almost always argue that the injured person shares the blame. How much that argument costs you depends on the state.

Most states apply some form of comparative negligence, reducing damages by the plaintiff’s percentage of fault. In the Bassett case, the jury found the plaintiff 20% responsible for his own injuries, reducing his recovery from the $2.87 million verdict.¹⁴ Under the “51 percent bar” rule used by a majority of states, a plaintiff who is 51% or more at fault recovers nothing. A handful of states, including California, Florida, and New York, follow pure comparative negligence, allowing some recovery even where the plaintiff was 99% at fault.²⁰

Four states and the District of Columbia still apply contributory negligence, a harsher rule under which any fault on the plaintiff’s part, even 1%, bars recovery entirely. Those states are Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia.²⁰ Utility companies also sometimes raise “intervening cause,” arguing a third party created the hazard in a way the utility could not foresee.²¹

Punitive Damages

Punitive damages are rare in electric shock cases, but when granted they can dwarf the compensatory award. They are reserved for conduct a jury finds especially reckless or egregious. The clearest example remains Goretzka v. West Penn Power Co., where a jury added $61 million in punitives to $48 million in compensatory damages for a $109 million total.⁵ Large punitive awards also get reduced or reversed with some regularity. In a Prince George’s County, Maryland, case involving the death of a 15-year-old girl who contacted a downed power line, the jury awarded $7.5 million in punitives, but that amount did not survive post-trial proceedings and the final verdict was reduced to $350,000.⁹

The Deadline That Can Reduce Your Recovery to Zero

Every state sets a statute of limitations for personal injury lawsuits, commonly running two to three years from the date of injury. Delaware, for example, sets a two-year deadline.²² Missing it typically extinguishes the right to sue entirely, no matter how strong the case. Because electrical injuries can take months or years to fully manifest, especially neurological and psychological effects, prompt medical documentation and a timely filing protect the value of the claim from going to nothing.

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