Million Dollar Settlements

Attorneys reported 36 million-dollar settlements in 2009 in Virginia Lawyers Weekly, three fewer than last year.

All but three of the settlements had a personal injury component. Two eminent domain cases and a commercial dispute were the only exceptions.

Vehicles were involved half the settlements, and a tractor-trailer was one of the vehicles in six of those cases.

Medical malpractice was the basis of six settlements. Perhaps surprisingly, premises liability was a factor in three of them – a slip-and-fall from leaking skylights in corporate office building, a rape in an apartment complex and a fatal fall in a cistern outside a renovated historic building.

That case was one of nine with an allegation of wrongful death.

Information about the largest of the settlements – a $14.5 million for a traumatic brain injury from an allegedly defective product – was sketchy, as were those of several other settlements.

Twenty of them, well over half, were designated as confidential, although most contained enough detail to provide significant information about the factors that figured into the settlement – whether it was a serious or unusual injury, a medical error, a search for insurance coverage or a structured settlement to provide lifetime income for the beneficiaries in a wrongful death case.

See the complete list of Million Dollar Settlements for 2009