Phil Singer is the CEO of Marathon Strategies
Despite its small population, Louisiana in 2024 remained among the top 10 states in terms of handing down “nuclear verdicts” – damages awards of $10 million or more – edging out larger states such as Illinois and Florida.
Louisiana finished No. 8 on the new ranking published this month by Marathon Strategies, a legal services company. The Pelican State recorded three nuclear verdicts totaling $733,140,104 in 2024, with life and health insurance being the main economic sectors affected, the report said.
States known for excessive litigation, such as California, New York and Texas, also made the top 10 list, but Nevada took the No. 1 spot due to what the report called outlier verdicts – a series of legal decisions that went against a now-defunct bottled water company, Real Water. The company’s goods, which were sold mainly in Nevada, were found to have been contaminated with rocket fuel and other potentially toxic substances, leading to damages awards totaling billions of dollars, according to the report.
Nationally, Marathon Strategies identified 135 cases in 2024 in which the verdict surpassed $10 million, a 52% increase in such outcomes over the previous year, the report said. The total payouts in these lawsuits reached $31.3 billion, which is more than double the total recorded in 2023, the study found.
The report also said the number of “thermonuclear verdicts” – those totaling $100 million or more – set a record last year at 49.
“Louisiana’s high ranking is the result of a perfect storm: permissive bad faith laws, a legal environment friendly to third-party litigation financing and a steady stream of coastal litigation,” Phil Singer, the CEO and founder of Marathon Strategies, told the Louisiana Record in an email. “Add to that a political climate – under both Democratic and Republican governors – that’s often aligned with the interests of trial lawyers, and you’ve got a state that consistently draws nuclear verdicts.”
In the current legislative session, Louisiana lawmakers passed several legal reform bills aimed at reducing excessive litigation and bringing down insurance costs. These include bills limiting damages recovery for plaintiffs who are 51% or more at fault for an injury, requiring that plaintiffs prove that their injuries were caused by the accidents being litigated and stricter rules on damages recovery for past medical bills.
But the report faults Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry for vetoing a measure passed last year that was supported by the state’s trucking industry. House Bill 423 would have limited plaintiffs to collecting amounts for medical injuries that reflect only what was paid by an insurance company or Medicare.
In 2024, Landry also signed a measure that extended the time period for filing tort actions from one year to two.
Louisiana has been one of the states historically associated with supersized jury verdicts, according to the report. These states include California, Pennsylvania, Texas, New York, Missouri, Delaware, Illinois and Florida, the study said.
The industries hardest hit by the continuing growth of nuclear verdicts are beverages; films and entertainment; fertilizers and agricultural chemicals; construction / engineering; technology; and fossil fuels, according to the report. This past year also marked the first time a cryptocurrency company was saddled with a nuclear verdict, Marathon Strategies reported.
