Personal Injury Lawsuit News: Verdicts, Mass Torts & State Laws

Personal injury lawsuit news in 2025 and 2026 has been driven by three forces: jury verdicts at a size the system has rarely seen, mass tort dockets moving toward or past major milestones, and a wave of state laws designed to pull those verdicts back down. If you are tracking a claim, considering one, or watching an industry you work in, the ground has shifted in all three directions at once.

Record Verdicts of 2025 and 2026

A Utah judge awarded $951 million in August 2025 to Azaylee McMicheal, who suffered a hypoxic-ischemic brain injury at Jordan Valley Medical Center’s West Valley Campus. The suit alleged untrained nursing staff gave excessive Pitocin and delayed a necessary cesarean despite signs of fetal distress. It is the largest medical malpractice verdict in Utah history.¹

A San Antonio jury in May 2025 awarded $831 million under Texas’s Dram Shop Act to the family of Blas Mendez Jr., a school behavior specialist left partially paralyzed when an intoxicated driver struck him on his motorcycle. The jury found Koozies Icehouse & Grill and its owner 90% responsible. The family has acknowledged they are unlikely to collect the full amount: the owner filed for bankruptcy and the bar closed.²

A Starr County, Texas jury returned a unanimous $1.6 billion wrongful death verdict in April 2026 against the operator of a hazardous chemicals facility in Pecos where a 2023 explosion killed two workers.³ A Harris County jury awarded $640 million in May 2025 to the family of a worker killed in a 2021 crane accident, with $480 million of it in punitive damages against TNT Crane & Rigging.⁴

A Cobb County, Georgia jury returned a $2 billion products liability verdict against Monsanto in Roundup cancer litigation, and a Detroit federal jury awarded $307.6 million against prison healthcare contractor CHS TX, Inc. (formerly Corizon Health) for denying a Michigan inmate medically necessary surgery.⁵⁶

Medical malpractice has produced several more headline awards. A Philadelphia jury returned $108.6 million in March 2026 in a forceps-related birth injury case. A Georgia jury awarded $70 million to Jessica Powell, a 28-year-old who lost both legs above the knee after medication errors and sepsis mismanagement. A New York jury awarded $60 million to David Gangaram, paralyzed after a routine epidural steroid injection. A Connecticut jury returned $49 million in a case alleging a gynecologist failed to diagnose high-risk HPV, allowing cervical cancer to advance.⁷¹

Where the Mass Torts Stand Now

About 199,000 cases were pending across all federal multidistrict litigation dockets as of March 2026, out of more than 704,000 total cases filed.⁸ A handful of dockets account for most of the current activity.

Johnson & Johnson Talc

The J&J talc litigation is the largest active mass tort by case count, with 68,029 cases pending in the federal MDL as of June 2026. A Houston bankruptcy judge rejected J&J’s third attempt to resolve the claims through an $8 billion Chapter 11 plan, citing voting irregularities and concerns over nonconsensual third-party releases, pushing the company back into trying individual cases. A Los Angeles jury awarded $32 million in a June 2026 mesothelioma trial, and a Connecticut judge raised a 2024 verdict from $15 million to $25 million by adding punitive damages. A California judge, however, vacated $950 million in punitive damages from a $966 million verdict, finding insufficient evidence of malice while leaving the $16 million compensatory portion intact.⁹

AFFF Firefighting Foam

More than 15,200 cases are pending in MDL 2873 in South Carolina alleging that PFAS in aqueous film-forming foam caused cancer and other diseases. Settlements exceeding $12.2 billion, including a $10.3 billion agreement with 3M, have resolved water contamination claims, but those funds go to public water suppliers, not to individuals with personal injury claims. No global personal injury settlement has been reached. Discovery is underway for 28 bellwether cases covering kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, and ulcerative colitis, with individual settlement values estimated between $200,000 and over $1 million depending on diagnosis and exposure.¹⁰

Hair Relaxers

More than 11,500 cases are consolidated in MDL 3060 in the Northern District of Illinois before Judge Mary M. Rowland, alleging that chemical relaxers made by L’Oréal, Revlon, and others caused uterine and other cancers. A 2022 NIH study found frequent users faced 2.55 times the risk of uterine cancer. Bellwether fact discovery for a pool of 32 cases closed in March 2026, with Daubert challenges due in late 2026 and initial bellwether trials expected in 2027. No global settlement has been reached. Revlon maintains a $44 million bankruptcy reserve for the claims.¹¹

GLP-1 Weight-Loss Drugs

Litigation over Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and other GLP-1 drugs is one of the fastest-growing dockets. More than 4,700 cases were pending as of April 2026 in MDL 3094 in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly failed to warn about gastroparesis, bowel obstruction, and other severe gastrointestinal injuries. A separate MDL (3163) before the same judge was established in December 2025 for claims of irreversible vision loss (NAION). No bellwether trials have been scheduled. In an August 2025 ruling, Judge Karen Spencer Marston required gastroparesis plaintiffs to have a gastric emptying study in their medical records to proceed. The FDA issued Novo Nordisk a warning letter in March 2026 for “serious violations” of postmarketing safety reporting requirements.¹²¹³

Social Media Addiction

MDL 3047 in the Northern District of California includes over 10,000 individual personal injury cases and roughly 800 school district claims against Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat, alleging the platforms were designed to exploit adolescent brain development. The first state bellwether trial began in California in February 2026. Snap and TikTok both reached confidential settlements in the initial bellwether in January 2026 while remaining defendants in other actions. Courts have allowed design-based product liability claims to proceed, holding that Section 230 does not shield platforms when the claims target features like infinite scroll and push notifications rather than third-party content.¹⁴

Artificial Stone Silicosis

A Los Angeles County jury awarded $52.4 million to Gustavo Reyes Gonzalez, a 34-year-old former countertop fabricator who needed a double-lung transplant after cutting and drilling artificial stone. The verdict was against Caesarstone, Cambria, and Color Marble; 29 of the originally named 34 manufacturers settled before trial. California has confirmed 172 silicosis cases among countertop workers statewide and enacted emergency workplace rules plus 2025 enforcement legislation. Australia banned engineered stone containing crystalline silica in July 2024.¹⁵¹⁶

Opioid Settlements

The Purdue Pharma bankruptcy plan, valued at over $7.4 billion, received final court approval in November 2025 with support from more than 99% of voting creditors. The Endo International personal injury trust began paying cleared claims in late April 2026, though the estimated gross pro rata award for individual claims is roughly $390 (about $1,950 for claimants granting additional releases). As of October 2025, affected families had received less than 2% of total opioid settlement funds.¹⁷¹⁸

New State Laws Changing What You Can Recover

Several states enacted major tort reform in 2025 and 2026 aimed at the kinds of verdicts described above. The changes matter directly if your claim is filed in those states.

Georgia passed two bills signed by Governor Brian Kemp in April 2025. They cap economic damages at the amount actually paid or owed, prohibit “anchoring” tactics that compare pain and suffering to fighter jet costs or athlete salaries, and require attorneys to argue the same figure for noneconomic damages in both opening and closing statements. The legislation also restricts litigation financing and requires funding entities to register with the state beginning in 2026.¹⁹

New York enacted sweeping auto-insurance tort reform signed by Governor Kathy Hochul on May 27, 2026, as part of the state budget. The law shifts New York from a “pure” to a “modified” comparative negligence system for motor vehicle cases, barring recovery for any plaintiff more than 50% at fault. It eliminates the “90/180-day” category of serious injury and sets a $100,000 cap on noneconomic damages for uninsured, impaired, or felony-committing drivers.²⁰

South Carolina abolished joint and several liability for defendants found less than 50% at fault. Louisiana now bars plaintiffs from recovery if they are 51% or more at fault. Arkansas restricted “phantom damages” by limiting past medical expense recovery to amounts actually paid or owed.¹⁹

Not every state is moving the same direction. Kansas and Oklahoma struck down broad noneconomic damage caps in recent years. Forty-one states impose no across-the-board limitation on noneconomic damages, and testimony before the Maryland legislature noted that no independent data correlates tort reform measures with lower insurance premiums for consumers.²¹

Litigation Funding Rules Are Tightening

Third-party litigation funding, an estimated $15.2 billion U.S. industry, is drawing new regulation. At least 50 bills related to funding were introduced in state legislatures in 2025, and six states enacted new laws. Montana now requires automatic disclosure of funding agreements to opposing parties and limits funder recovery to 25% of any judgment or settlement. Georgia’s law allows discovery of funding agreements of $25,000 or more and bars funding by foreign adversaries, with criminal penalties for willful violations. Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, and Kansas have adopted various disclosure or restriction requirements. At the federal level, the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules has formed a subcommittee studying whether a nationwide disclosure rule is warranted.²²

AI Is Entering the Courtroom

Artificial intelligence is now a working tool and an evidentiary problem. Roughly 37% of personal injury professionals report using generative AI, outpacing the broader legal industry’s 31%. Firms with high AI adoption are nearly three times more likely to report revenue growth.²³²⁴

Courts are also seeing fabricated evidence. In one California case, a judge identified AI-generated audio and video submitted as testimony after noticing the witness’s motionless face and unnatural mannerisms. A related issue, the “deepfake defense,” involves parties attempting to dismiss legitimate evidence by claiming it was AI-fabricated. A proposed Federal Rule of Evidence 707 would subject machine-generated evidence to the same reliability standards required of expert testimony, and California’s Judicial Council AI Task Force is developing guidance for evaluating AI-generated materials.²⁵

By the Numbers

About 95% of personal injury lawsuits settle before trial. Cases that reach a jury favor plaintiffs more than 90% of the time. The average payout across surveyed cases is $52,900, with federal cases averaging $75,000, and the average auto liability bodily injury claim rose to $27,373 in 2024, an 8% increase year over year.²³

Federal personal injury and product liability filings fell 73% in the year ending March 2025, a drop largely attributable to the resolution of the 3M Combat Arms earplug litigation, which involved nearly 400,000 total cases and a $6 billion settlement.²³²⁶ Florida leads the country in personal injury filing rates at 127.41 per 100,000 people, far ahead of second-place Ohio at 30.38.²⁴

1
Morris James. Largest Medical Malpractice Verdicts of the Past Year
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Munsch. Biggest Texas Verdicts of 2025
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PR Newswire. Texas Jury Returns $1.6 Billion Verdict
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Judicial Hellholes. Texas Judicial Hellholes
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Courtroom View Network. CVN’s Top 10 Most Impressive Plaintiff Verdicts of 2025
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Detroit Free Press. Prison Health Care Verdict $307.6 Million
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Morris James. Largest Medical Malpractice Verdicts of 2025
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ConsumerShield. Top Active Mass Torts by Cases
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TorHoerman Law. Johnson and Johnson Talcum Powder Lawsuit
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MDL Update. Aqueous Film Forming Foams MDL 2873
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MDL Update. Hair Relaxer MDL 3060
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Wagstaff Cartmell. GLP-1 Multidistrict Litigation MDL 3094
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1-800-LAW-1010. Ozempic Wegovy Lawsuit
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Spencer Law. Social Media Addiction Lawsuits 2026 KGM Trial MDL 3047
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Public Health Watch. Jury Awards $52.4M Against Artificial Stone Countertop Makers
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Brayton Law. Court Successes Artificial Stone Silicosis
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Opioid Settlement Tracker. Global Settlement Tracker
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Endo PI Trust. Endo Opioid Personal Injury Trust
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Faegre Drinker. Tort Reform Is Top of Mind in 2025
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Barclay Damon. NYS Enacts Sweeping Auto Insurance Reforms
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Maryland General Assembly. Committee Testimony on Damage Caps
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Shook, Hardy & Bacon. An Update on State Laws Regulating Third-Party Litigation Funding
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Clio. Personal Injury Law Statistics
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CASEpeer. Personal Injury Statistics
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National Center for State Courts. AI-Generated Evidence Threat to Public Trust in Courts
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U.S. District Court, Northern District of Florida. 3M Products Liability Litigation MDL No. 2885