{"id":46513,"date":"2025-07-07T17:29:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T17:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/46513\/"},"modified":"2025-07-07T17:29:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T17:29:08","slug":"california-nuclear-verdicts-rarely-yield-full-payouts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/46513\/","title":{"rendered":"California \u201cNuclear\u201d Verdicts Rarely Yield Full Payouts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As we have previously reported\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/natlawreview.com\/article\/if-youre-experiencing-massive-jury-verdict-hang-and-dial-911\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/natlawreview.com\/article\/san-diego-jury-goes-nuclear-11-million-verdict-workplace-discrimination-case\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>, \u201cnuclear\u201d verdicts from California juries in employment discrimination and harassment cases have become increasingly common over the past few years. Although these massive verdicts garner a lot of attention, they are only part of the story after the verdict comes in.<\/p>\n<p>For many successful plaintiffs, the journey to collect these awards is fraught with numerous delays and obstacles, and the \u201cvictorious\u201d employee\u2019s final recovery may be only a fraction of the original judgment\u2014if anything at all. Several key factors contribute to this outcome:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Post-Trial Reductions<\/strong>: Large awards (especially single-plaintiff verdicts exceeding $10 million) may be reduced after the trial by the judge, an appellate court, or in post-trial settlement negotiations (let\u2019s call that amount the \u201cJudgment\u201d).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Attorneys\u2019 Fees<\/strong>: Plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers usually take up to 50% of the Judgment as their contingency fee, and there may be additional lawyers and law firms on the plaintiff\u2019s side who also seek to get paid their \u201cfair share.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>Litigation Costs<\/strong>: If they\u2019re not otherwise reimbursed, certain litigation expenses\u2014such as deposition costs, expert witness fees, court filing fees, jury and witness fees, etc.\u2014are all deducted from the plaintiff\u2019s share of the Judgment.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Taxation<\/strong>: At least a portion if not all of the Judgment may be taxed in the very highest state and federal tax brackets, resulting in a total tax bill from Uncle Sam and his state counterparts of close to 50%.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, it is not uncommon for a successful plaintiff to pocket less than 25% of the Judgment. But that\u2019s not the end of the challenges!<\/p>\n<p>After all these reductions have been applied, some plaintiffs have difficulty\u00a0collecting\u00a0the Judgment or any part of it from the defendant\u2014a task that can be even more difficult than winning the case itself. A recent\u00a0Wall Street Journal\u00a0investigation highlights the collection struggles of several plaintiffs who had won seven and eight-figure judgments in employment cases involving sexual harassment, sexual assault, and whistleblower retaliation. The defendants in some of these cases apparently have successfully evaded collection efforts by living abroad and using sophisticated financial tactics to shield and transfer assets.<\/p>\n<p>For example, one plaintiff interviewed in the article said she has recovered\u00a0none\u00a0of the $8.4 million verdict she obtained after a nearly decade-long legal battle that included two successive jury trials. The article quotes her: \u201cNo one knows that I\u2019m not a multimillionaire and that I don\u2019t have a dollar to my name.\u201d Other plaintiffs recovered small amounts, but only after turning to collections firms to locate and seize the defendant\u2019s assets. These collections firms in turn charge a percentage of whatever assets they manage to find, which, on top of the fees already owed to plaintiff\u2019s trial counsel, further diminishes the employee\u2019s final share.<\/p>\n<p>These experiences underscore a harsh reality: Even an eye-popping, multimillion-dollar jury verdict may not buy a new Rolls Royce and a house in the hills after all is said and done!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As we have previously reported\u00a0here\u00a0and\u00a0here, \u201cnuclear\u201d verdicts from California juries in employment discrimination and harassment cases have become&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":46514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,420,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-46513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114813139143580699","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}