Verdicts & Settlements

Greg Francis served as lead counsel for the team of lawyers that reached a $1.25 billion settlement with the USDA on behalf of black farmers from around the country.

Tens of thousands of black farmers allegedly suffered systematic discrimination at the hands of the United States Department of Agriculture between 1981 and 1996. During that period and as part of the discrimination, the USDA allegedly denied black farmers loans, subsidies and other benefits provided to white farmers.

As part of the settlement, more than 33,000 individual black farmers or their heirs received payments of $50,000, plus an additional payment of $12,500 paid to the Internal Revenue Service to cover the taxes owed on the awarded amount. This marks the largest civil rights settlement in U.S. history.

Osborne & Francis Founding Partner Joe Osborne was a member of the executive committee that successfully consolidated and settled a group of lawsuits against the medical technology company Stryker in November of 2018. According to court documents, Stryker’s LFIT Anatomic CoCr V40 Femoral Head harmed patients when normal wear and tear to the metal-on-metal artificial hip joint released toxic metal particles into the recipient’s body.

The settlement was made possible by Osborne’s work with the executive committee that sought to consolidate the multidistrict litigation against Stryker into a single district. The suits were consolidated in the District of Massachusetts in April of 2017, paving the way for the November 2018 settlement that compensated “hundreds and hundreds” of patients who received the Stryker hip. Because the cases were settled confidentially, the number of cases settled and the compensation paid out by Stryker were not disclosed.

Joe Osborne was invited to join that executive committee because of his history of successful litigation against Stryker and his broader experience with mass torts and class actions involving medical devices. In 2014, Osborne was on the steering committee for suits over the Rejuvenate modular neck device that forced Stryker to compensate patients with more than $1 billion.

Joseph Osborne was part of a trial team that secured the first federal court verdict in the country against Boston Scientific regarding injuries to four women from the Pinnacle mesh device. Jurors awarded Osborne’s client more than $6.7 million. Boston Scientific Corp. was ordered to pay $26.7 million to the group of women who claimed injuries from the company’s vaginal inserts. Jurors awarded Amal Eghnayem, Osborne’s client, more than $6.7 million.

“Jurors in federal court in Miami in November 2014 found Boston Scientific officials designed their Pinnacle pelvic-organ implants defectively and failed to properly warn doctors and their patients about the device’s risks” Joseph Osborne, said in an interview with Bloomberg.

The verdict is the first in a federal case against Boston Scientific over the Pinnacle inserts and the first to combine more than one plaintiff’s claims.

Joseph A. Osborne was appointed to the Plaintiffs Steering Committee for the Trasylol Multidistrict Litigation in West Palm Beach, Fl. Trasylol, a drug used to limit bleeding during heart surgery, was marketed by Bayer Pharmaceuticals as a safe and effective medication. In 2006, after the drug had been on the market for nearly twelve years and was used in approximately one-third of heart operations in America, a study performed by Doctor Dennis Mangano indicated that the use of Trasylol had serious side effects. These included kidney damage, kidney failure, and even death. Bayer took little notice of Dr. Mangano’s findings and continued to sell the drug for another two years, until, the FDA urged that Trasylol be withdrawn from the market in November 2007.

In this two year period, Trasylol was found to be the cause of approximately 22,000 deaths and numerous catastrophic injuries. Through aggressive advocacy, and most importantly, unparalleled dedication and support for its clients, Joseph A. Osborne was pleased to announce a settlement of $9.475 million with Bayer to resolve its Trasylol claims.

Settlement on behalf of our client who did not receive timely medication in the Emergency Department to treat an evolving stroke, which left him with permanent injuries and neurologic deficits. The doctors and nurses involved failed to correctly diagnose his true condition and failed to administer clot-busting medication in a timely manner. 

The claim was amicably resolved with all medical providers and their insurance companies prior to a lawsuit being filed.

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Surgery was performed on a minor child that was contraindicated. The surgery caused a permanent brain injury. The doctors also failed to recognize her cognitive condition was worsening postoperatively and failed to initiate treatment for a progressing brain infection.

Our client suffered brain damage after being left alone on a psychiatric unit in a hospital. He was brought to the facility in mental crisis and negligently treated by the nurses and doctors at the hospital. His damages are permanent. The funds from the settlement will help support his future care and medical needs.

Joe Osborne and co-counsel Randi McGinn secured what is believed to be the first verdict in the country for the Kinectiv Technology hip implant manufactured by Zimmer.

One month after the initial surgery McDonald required revision surgery, replacing all components except for the stem base.  An additional surgery was performed 16 months later, which was followed with a 6-week course of IV antibiotics as all of the necrotic tissue caused by corrosion induced metallosis was not able to be removed. The court stated that it “is more than probable” that he will need a third even more complex revision surgery sometime in the future.

The court found that Zimmer did not fully or adequately test the configuration of the new modular design as they tested the individual components in isolation when it is known that there is an interaction between components of the system and performance of the system.

The court further found that “the unreasonable risk of metallosis, whether from corrosion, micro-motion, fretting or some other mechanism, makes the MLTK with a metal CoCr head a defective product.”

For further detail read the full Findings of Fact & Conclusions of Law.

Our 27 year old client was tragically shot and killed while she was in her rented trailer park home. Our investigation revealed that the trailer park had a significant violent crime problem, which the owner failed to properly address. Crime records showed that there where hundreds of calls to 911 and the police every year, during the three year period before the shooting. Despite the serious crime problem, the owner of the trailer park failed to have manned security on the date of the shooting, which may have prevented this attack.

Our client suffered a slip and fall due to water on the floor at a downtown Orlando nightclub. Prior to the lawsuit, the nightclub offered $7,000. In response, we filed suit and began to prepare the case for trial. Video of the incident revealed that an employee cleaned up the water and that there was no warning sign in the area. 

Our client underwent three surgical procedures and had a future recommendation at the time we settled the case shortly after mediation.

Our client was shot at a vacation home community. The community only had one serious violent crime in the past 3 years, but it did have a history of out of control house parties which was a constant nuisance. Throughout the discovery process we determined that the security guard company failed to follow its policies and procedures. 

The security company allowed the attacker to enter the community and it also failed to prevent the house party where our client was shot. The homeowner, homeowners association, property management company, and a popular home rental company were also negligent in their operations and they contributed to the settlement.

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Confidential settlement in a failure to appropriately treat pulmonary embolism. No other info can be provided due to confidentiality.

Our client suffered a traumatic brain injury at a warehouse of a popular grocery store as a result of a large cart that was used to stock merchandise. The top shelf of the cart became unsecured and it struck our client on the head causing vision, memory, and vestibular issues. Through our investigation, we found that the subject cart was unsafe and was the subject of claims and lawsuits throughout the country. 

The defendant was made aware that the cart was dangerous and defectively designed but did not do enough to provide safer equipment prior to the incident. The case settled prior to a hearing on our motion to compel evidence regarding prior incidents involving the cart at all stores the defendant was using the cart.

Settlement on behalf of our client who was prescribed an inappropriate antibiotic for his condition. He suffered drug toxicity complications, leaving him with permanent neurologic injuries. The insurance company paid all amounts available under the insurance policy for the physician and medical group.

Settlement on behalf of our client who suffered neurologic injuries due to her medical provider’s failure to appropriately diagnose her true condition. She was inappropriately discharged from an Emergency Department and suffered a neurologic event at home the next day.