Legal Malpractice Settlements and Verdicts: Notable Cases

Verified legal malpractice results, as of September 2026. Amounts are what the jury, arbitrator, or court awarded unless noted. "What happened next" reflects the latest public information we found.

Case and court	Year	Amount	What went wrong	What happened next
Scott Martin's suit against Andrews Kurth (Harris County, Texas)	2015	$196 million jury verdict	Firm's work on a family business settlement later held an unenforceable "agreement to agree"	Judge declined to enter judgment and ordered mediation; settled on confidential terms in 2016
Asbaghi v. Nydegger (San Diego Superior Court)	2016	More than $45 million jury verdict	Professional negligence claim against a lawyer and his firm	Settled before post-trial motions; lawyer's policy limit was $1 million
Gregg v. Cooley LLP (Mercer County, New Jersey)	2025 verdict, 2026 judgment	$15.65 million verdict; $25.4 million judgment with interest and fees	Undisclosed conflicts while advising a biotech founder on venture financing	Post-trial motion denied; Cooley says it will appeal
SKMDV Holdings v. Green Jacobson (Missouri Court of Appeals)	2016 (appeal)	$10.5 million judgment	Revenue multiplier left out of an asset purchase agreement	Affirmed; post-judgment interest award reversed
Robert Wyrosdick's claim against Morgan & Morgan (Georgia arbitration)	2026	$4.3 million award, including $3.15 million punitive	Car crash case settled for $45,000 without documented written consent	Firm says it strongly disagrees with the findings
Morgan & Morgan v. Pollock (Florida 2d DCA)	2020	$5 million verdict cut to $250,000	Missed presuit notice; limitations ran on medical negligence claims	Remittitur: only $250,000 in insurance proved collectible
Chamblee Ryan v. JBS Carriers (Texas 12th Court of Appeals)	2024	$1.14 million judgment reversed	Missed notice of appeal; client said a better settlement was lost	Take-nothing judgment: no expert proof of damages
Robert Adelman's suit against Proskauer Rose (Suffolk County, Massachusetts)	2023	$636 million claimed; terms not disclosed	Alleged negligent drafting in a hedge fund spin-off	Settled in mediation before a May 2024 trial date

As of September 2026, the largest legal malpractice jury verdict we could verify is the $196 million verdict a Harris County, Texas jury returned against Andrews Kurth in November 2015, and that case settled on confidential terms months later.

Most cases in the table show at least one of the forces that pull a malpractice award down after trial.

Settlement after the verdict

After the Andrews Kurth verdict, the trial judge declined to enter a final judgment and sent the parties back to mediation. The case settled in March 2016 on confidential terms, according to reporting at the time. Post-verdict settlements are common because both sides face the risk and delay of an appeal.

The lawyer's insurance limit

In the San Diego case against attorney Neil Nydegger and his firm, a 2018 federal court order in a related insurance dispute recounts that the jury returned a verdict of more than $45 million in September 2016, that the lawyer's professional liability policy had a $1 million limit, and that the case settled before post-trial motions were heard, with the lawyer agreeing to assume liability above that limit. A lawyer with a $1 million malpractice policy faced a verdict more than 45 times that limit, which shows why insurance coverage, not the verdict, often decides what a client receives. Our guide on whether your lawyer has malpractice insurance explains how coverage works.

Collectibility on appeal

In Morgan & Morgan v. Pollock, the Florida Second District Court of Appeal ordered a $5 million verdict reduced to $250,000. The clients had proved the lawyer's mistakes, but the only evidence of what the original defendant could have paid was a $250,000 insurance policy. The court held that collectibility is part of what a malpractice plaintiff must prove.

Missing expert testimony

In Chamblee Ryan v. JBS Carriers, the trial court awarded the client $1,141,671.67 after the firm failed to file a notice of appeal. The Tyler Court of Appeals reversed in 2024 and rendered a take-nothing judgment, because the client had no admissible expert testimony on what a settlement would have looked like. See whether you need an expert witness.

Look at the top of the table and a pattern appears. The largest numbers come from deals, business disputes, and loyalty problems, where the amount at stake was already large before the lawyer got involved.

• Conflicts of interest. The Cooley jury found the firm breached its fiduciary duties to a founder while it had relationships with the investors on the other side. Our page on conflict of interest claims covers how these cases work.
• Drafting. The Green Jacobson and Proskauer matters turned on what was, or was not, written into a transaction document.
• Business advice. The Andrews Kurth case turned on whether a settlement document the firm worked on would hold up. It did not.

Industry data points the same way. Summarizing a Lockton report, Minnesota Lawyer reported that there have been 83 publicly reported settlements or verdicts above $20 million involving law firms since the mid-1980s, with an average of $47.4 million, a median of $34.5 million, and a largest of $390 million in 2020. Of those, 39 were tied to dishonest clients, 13 to conflicts of interest, and 9 to mistakes, with the rest involving combinations.

It also helps to remember what the table leaves out. Most legal malpractice claims that pay anything settle privately, often before a lawsuit is even filed, and those amounts are almost never published. The cases that make the news are the ones that went to trial, were appealed, or involved a well-known firm.

Most people who contact us had a divorce, an injury case, a criminal case, a real estate closing, or an estate go wrong. Those cases can absolutely support a malpractice claim, but their value is set by the same rules shown above, just at a smaller scale.

The Morgan & Morgan cases are the closest to everyday matters. One involved a missed deadline in a medical negligence case. The other involved a car crash case that the arbitrator found was settled without the client's documented consent. Our pages on missed deadlines and settlements without consent explain those claims in detail.

The broader data is sobering. Summarizing the ABA Standing Committee on Lawyers' Professional Liability's study of claims from 2020 to 2023, Minnesota Lawyer reported that 82 percent of claims closed with no payment. In the ABA's 2020 to 2023 legal malpractice claims data, as reported by Minnesota Lawyer, roughly four of every five claims ended without any payment to the client. Our legal malpractice statistics page covers that study in depth.

What decides your own number is covered in how much a legal malpractice case is worth: what you lost, whether you can prove the case within a case, whether the original result would have been collectible, and whether the lawyer has insurance or assets.

If a lawyer or website cites a big legal malpractice number, you can check it. Here is the order we use:

1. Find the court and case number. Trial court dockets show whether a judgment was actually entered, not just a verdict.
2. Look for an appellate opinion. Appeals courts publish opinions on free sites such as state court websites, FindLaw, and CourtListener. The opinion tells you whether the award survived.
3. Look for follow-up reporting. Legal publications often report post-verdict settlements, as with the Andrews Kurth case.
4. Separate the award from the payment. A judgment may include interest and fees on top of damages (the Cooley judgment added more than $5.57 million in interest), and a confidential settlement may be far lower than either.
5. Be skeptical of firm press releases. Law firms advertising their own results may leave out later reductions.

Three different numbers

Keep three figures separate when you read about any case. The verdict is what the jury decided. The judgment is what the court enters, which can add interest, costs, and sometimes fees, or subtract amounts for the client's share of fault or a remittitur. The amount collected is what the client actually receives, which can be lower than either because of settlements, insurance limits, and appeals. Most news coverage stops at the first number.

Client cases and third-party cases are also different. Some of the largest payments by law firms come from lawsuits by investors or bankruptcy trustees claiming a firm helped a client commit fraud, rather than from a client suing over a lost case. Those cases follow different rules, and we left them out of the table above so the comparisons stay useful for someone suing their own lawyer.

A published legal malpractice verdict should be checked against the trial court docket and any appellate opinion before it is treated as money paid, because remittiturs, reversals, and confidential settlements are common.

If you think your lawyer's mistake cost you, a free case review takes about two minutes and can connect you with an independent attorney in your state who handles legal malpractice claims.