Juries handed out fewer big-ticket verdict awards to individual plaintiffs in 2003, according to an annual survey released Friday.
The value of the 10 biggest jury awards fell to $1.27 billion, a six-year low, Boston-based Lawyers Weekly USA said. The highest-paying verdict was $254.6 million, the smallest top award since 1993. . . .
[T]he top award went to two German entrepreneurs who won a complex lawsuit in which they claimed they were cheated out of their equity stake in a European joint venture between Bertelsmann AGG and America Online.
Other top awards included: $250 million to a man who developed cancer after working for decades in the U.S. Steel factory in Indiana; $163.8 million to the family of a Texas mechanic who was killed when he tried to remove a massive truck tire using a blowtorch; and $70.4 million to an oilman who accused Halliburton Energy Services of depriving him of the opportunity to develop a lucrative oil field in Kazakhstan.
Details from the AP here.