Philadelphia juries awarded $3 billion less in verdicts in 2025 compared to 2024

Philadelphia juries issued only three verdicts of $10 million or more in 2025, less than a third of the so-called nuclear verdicts awarded in 2024. The decline was so pronounced, it knocked the city’s Court of Common Pleas from the top spot on an annual “judicial hellhole” list.

The overall amount doled out by Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas jurors declined by more than $3 billion this year compared to 2024, according to court data up to Dec. 19. The nearly $120 million awarded in 74 plaintiff verdicts represents largely a return to pre-pandemic norm.

Two 2024 verdicts explain the majority of the gap: $2.25 billion against Monsanto in a Roundup weed killer case and $725.5 million against Exxon Mobil in a trial over toxic exposure to benzene-containing products.

Compare those figures to the largest verdicts this year, a $35 million medical malpractice verdict against the University of Pennsylvania and Main Line Health and $15.3 million against a skill game designer and manufacturer for a dispute that led to the death of a Scranton man.

Even the American Tort Reform Foundation, a group tied to an association that advocates for reform of civil litigation and represents business interests, took notice. Last year, the foundation blasted Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, along with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, as the nation’s top “judicial hellhole.”

In the 2025-26 report, the Philadelphia court was dethroned and ranked fifth. (The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had its own entry this year, making the group’s “watch list.”)

“2025 did not bring the same level of activity, but this decline is not the result of positive reforms or improved legal activity, but rather a reduction of trials,” the report says on the fewer number of large verdicts in the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.

This year had roughly 70 fewer trials that went to verdict, and no mass tort trials at all.

Mass tort is the umbrella name for how courts handle a large volume of cases that all allege similar injuries. For example, the dozens of lawsuits in Philadelphia accusing Roundup weedkiller of causing blood cancer. The cases are consolidated under one judge, and “bellwether trials” are held to get a sense of what the cost of a global settlement might be, if an agreement is ever reached.

Verdicts in mass tort cases are often large, as plaintiff attorneys encourage jurors to award a figure that the company’s boardroom would notice. Two of Philadelphia’s largest five verdicts in 2024 came from mass tort cases.

Mass tort trials are scheduled for 2026, starting in January, and with them large verdicts could trend up again.

Attorneys say there is more to the story than counting trials, as the large verdicts of 2024 and 2023 shaped how cases are handled behind the scenes. And fewer large verdicts don’t necessarily mean that defendants in Philadelphia are paying less.

Robert J. Mongeluzzi, the founder of Saltz Mongeluzzi Bendesky, said defendants and insurers are agreeing to large settlements before any verdicts are delivered.

“Defendants and their insurance carriers have resolved catastrophic cases by offering tens of millions of dollars to resolve these cases in advance of trial,” Mongeluzzi said via email.

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John Hare, a defense attorney with Marshall Dennehy, said that the large verdicts of recent years are prompting defendants to pay more, and more often, than they otherwise would.

“There is a correlation between a rise in nuclear verdicts and a rise in nuclear settlements,” Hare said.

The attorney also credits the court’s effort to mediate settlements in medical malpractice cases as one driver of the decline. But the key context is the historically high verdicts in 2023 and 2024, Hare said.

“I don’t think the era of nuclear verdicts is over,” he said.