Companies increasingly facing massive nuclear and thermonuclear lawsuits
Massive lawsuits against private corporations have ballooned in recent years.
In 2024, 135 lawsuits against corporate defendants in the United States resulted in nuclear verdicts – considered a verdict where the defendant owes more than $10 million. It’s the largest number of these cases since 2009, during the Great Recession. It’s also a 52% increase over the amount in 2023, a report from Marathon Strategies said.
These lawsuits resulted in $31.3 billion in payouts, 116% more than nuclear verdicts netted in 2023.
The verdicts came in 77 courts across 34 states. Additionally, 49 cases had verdicts exceeding $100 million (thermonuclear verdicts), and five were over $1 billion – up from 27 and two in 2023, respectively.
Similarly, last year’s median nuclear verdict was $51 million, more than double the $21 million per case in 2020.
Arantxa Hernandez, senior communications associate at Marathon Strategies, said these lawsuits are bad for American businesses.
“These record-breaking verdicts are not just a legal threat – they’re demonstrating what is quickly becoming an existential reputational and financial crisis for businesses across industries. Companies facing these lawsuits suffer in both the short- and long-term, with stock drops, investor panic, and permanent brand damage as high-profile cases and expensive verdicts dominate the news cycle,” Hernandez told The Center Square.
These lawsuits impacted 55 different industries. The industries hardest-hit were beverages ($8.5 billion), movies and entertainment ($4.7 billion), fertilizers and agricultural chemicals ($2.3 billion), construction and engineering ($2 billion), technology hardware, storage & peripherals ($1.9 billion), and oil and gas ($1.8 billion).
The biggest financial penalty was levied against the now-defunct company Real Water, a Nevada-based Alkaline water company whose product had been contaminated with a chemical found in rocket fuel. The total financial penalty against the company exceeded $5 billion.
States that had the highest total penalties were California ($6.9 billion), Pennsylvania ($3.4 billion), Texas ($3 billion), and New York ($2.1 billion).
Although Florida is a large state, it enacted tort reform in 2023, causing it to drop in the rankings.
Florida ranked second in total settlement amounts from 2009 to 2022. However, it dropped to seventh in 2023 and 10th in 2024, according to the report.
The types of litigation driving these massive payouts have stayed consistent, with most nuclear verdicts coming from state courts ($20 billion across 85 cases), not federal courts ($11 billion across 50), the report found.
Product liability ($13.7 billion) and intellectual property ($4.4 billion) cases were the biggest contributing factors.
Additionally, the report found that trade secrets litigation is becoming more common.
Notably, an Oakland jury awarded $604.9 million to Propel Fuels after finding that Phillips 66 used confidential information obtained during acquisition talks to start a competing renewable fuels business.
Similarly, a case ruled on in Boston resulted in a record $452 million verdict under the Defend Trade Secrets Act. It came after a Korean medical device maker was found to have stolen manufacturing secrets for insulin pumps, including by poaching rival employees.
