Topics: Jury Awards - 1595 results

An inmate in a New Mexico county jail who was put in solitary confinement for nearly two years without being charged has won a $15.5 million settlement. A jury awarded Stephen Slevin $22 million in his suit against Doña Ana County in January of 2012. The county appealed, but agreed last week to pay the $15.5 million settlement and drop its appeal of the verdict. Slevin, now 59, was arrested on a drunk driving charge in August 2005. He spent …

A jury ordered a nursing home to pay over $28 million for fraudulent billing, providing worthless services and for retaliating against two employees who complained about the shoddy care at the facility. Two former employees of the Momence Meadows Nursing Center in Illinois brought their claim in 2004, accusing the nursing home of providing substandard care to elderly and disabled patients that lead to the deaths of three patients and rampant bed sores on patients. Patients with bed sores, or …

A worker who was fired for her panic attacks won a $21.7 million jury verdict against her employer, including $16.5 million in punitive damages for the employer’s malice. April Rodriguez was a customer service rep for waste disposal company Valley Vista Services. The 34-year-old mother of four asked for time off and work accommodations to deal with her panic attacks. Instead, she was fired. She sued her employer and its parent company, Zerep Management Corp., claiming her firing was illegal …

A roofer who got jolted by a live electrical wire while working on the roof of a Honda warehouse won a $7 million award for his injuries. Charles Shea, a 34-year-old New Jersey man, was employed by a roofing company and sent to work on a warehouse owned by Honda Motor Co. and maintained by another company, Trane Inc. Shea was touched by a live wire left on the roof after a condensing unit had been removed. The wire “had …

Five workers injured by a factory blast won $3 million against their employer for intentionally sending them into danger. The workers of Tec-Cast, a metal casting plant in New Jersey, were working near a pressurized boiler-type tank in January 2008 when it exploded for unknown reasons. “It sounded like a bomb went off,” the New York Times quoted one witness as saying after the blast that reportedly sent people fleeing, screaming and crying. One worker, Mario Gomez, was standing directly …