Pennsylvania: Philadelphia & Surrounds: A Litigation: General Commercial Overview
Pennsylvania Litigation Trends to Watch in 2026
In 2025, Pennsylvania saw a steep decline in “nuclear verdicts,” reversing an upward year-over-year trend since the COVID-19 pandemic. After a record number of eight-figure-plus civil jury awards in 2024, Philadelphia saw fewer large verdicts last year. Philadelphia juries awarded only three verdicts over USD10 million, and total damages awarded in Philadelphia dropped by over USD3 billion from 2024. This reversal likely reflects an increase in settlements as corporations observed the significant verdicts being awarded in Philadelphia in recent years. In addition, Philadelphia-area health systems have invested more heavily in legal spend, beginning to level the playing field with the plaintiff’s bar.
Pennsylvania’s litigation landscape in 2026, as detailed below, is defined by the continuing tension between large plaintiff verdicts and appellate review of those verdicts, the evolution of digital contract formation standards and their impact on mandatory arbitration clauses, as well as expanding theories of liability in pharmaceutical and opioid litigation. The ongoing Roundup appellate battles over federal preemption, the fallout from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s narrowing of workers’ compensation co-employee immunity, and the developing pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) opioid liability theory all signal that Pennsylvania’s courts are poised for another consequential year.
Medical malpractice verdicts
Pennsylvania hospital USD207 million medical malpractice judgment upheld on appeal
The Pennsylvania Superior Court unanimously affirmed a USD207 million judgment against the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, the largest medical malpractice award in state history. The suit alleged the hospital and medical professionals caused the brain injury of a newborn baby due to a negligent delivery. The plaintiff sustained cerebral palsy as a result of the brain injury and also had severe cognitive impairments preventing him from speaking and moving on his own, and needed to be fed via a gastrostomy tube. The Superior Court found that the award did not “shock the conscience” given the evidence presented at trial. This affirmance of the largest medical malpractice judgment in Pennsylvania history sent a strong signal about the appellate courts’ willingness to sustain extraordinary damages awards in cases involving catastrophic patient injuries.
Main Line Health USD35 million medical malpractice verdict
A Philadelphia jury reached a USD35 million verdict in December 2025 against Main Line Health and the University of Pennsylvania Health System for an alleged cancer misdiagnosis that led to an unnecessary total hysterectomy. The evidence presented in that case was unusual, involving contaminated biopsy slides and a laboratory error, including a mix-up of DNA – a second person’s DNA was used for the cancer diagnosis, while the plaintiff did not have cancer, leading to the unnecessary operation.
Einstein Healthcare USD5.6 million birth injury and privacy verdict
A Philadelphia jury awarded USD4.1 million in malpractice damages and an additional USD1.5 million for invasion of privacy/breach of confidentiality in June 2025 against a nurse midwife and Einstein Healthcare Network. The damages were awarded after the midwife posted an unauthorized photograph of the patient following delivery.
Punitive damages award vacated on appeal due to untimely amendment of complaint during trial
A Pennsylvania appellate panel vacated a jury’s USD2.7 million punitive damages award in May 2025, in a suit accusing a nursing home of negligently causing a resident’s fractured hip. Plaintiff Mildred Bernavage alleged Green Ridge Care Center and parent company Saber Healthcare Group caused her to suffer a fractured hip when she was improperly helped across a shower room floor without proper precautions. The Lackawanna County jury awarded compensatory damages of approximately USD300,000, and then added USD2.7 million in punitive damages. On appeal, the Superior Court held that punitive damages were improper because plaintiff’s counsel should not have been permitted to allege that the home’s employees acted recklessly (thereby giving rise to punitive damages) for the first time in the middle of the trial. The Superior Court held that it was too late for plaintiff to amend her complaint during the trial because it came as an “unfair surprise” to the defendants. Although pleadings are allowed to be liberally amended in Pennsylvania, including until the eve of trial, this appellate decision defines when such an amendment is too late. During the previous three years of litigation, the concept of recklessness was never raised and only emerged at trial after witness testimony was elicited to that effect.
Product liability verdicts
The Pennsylvania courts continue to see a high level of activity in product liability and pharmaceutical litigation.
Mitsubishi USD1 billion verdict reversed on appeal
In December 2025, the Pennsylvania Superior Court vacated a USD1 billion Philadelphia jury verdict against Mitsubishi in a product liability suit involving a defective seat belt that allegedly caused a motorist’s catastrophic spinal cord injuries and paralysis. The appellate court ordered a new trial because the jury had been instructed to apply the wrong legal standard for design defect claims – strict liability rather than the “crashworthiness doctrine” – thereby depriving the automaker of a fair trial.
J&J talc verdict
In February 2026, a Philadelphia jury found Johnson & Johnson (J&J) liable for a USD250,000 verdict in a second talc trial in the city. The case is part of the broader talc litigation alleging J&J’s products caused harm to consumers. The verdict is notably smaller than some of the blockbuster awards seen in other Philadelphia mass tort trials.
Roundup litigation continues to produce divided appellate results
The Monsanto Roundup litigation in Pennsylvania continued to develop on multiple fronts.
In June 2025, the Pennsylvania Superior Court refused to wipe out a USD3.5 million verdict against Monsanto for a cancer patient who blamed Roundup for her disease.
Plaintiff Kelly J. Martel sued Monsanto and another chemical company alleging that she developed non-Hodgkin Lymphoma from exposure to Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup. In December 2023, a Philadelphia jury awarded her USD3.5 million: USD500,000 in compensatory damages and USD3 million in punitive damages.
On appeal, Monsanto argued that the USD3 million punitive damages award was unwarranted, excessive, and “improperly cumulative.” Among other things, Monsanto asserted that punitive damages were improper because Roundup is approved for use by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and that the evidence demonstrated that the company acted in accordance with “scientific consensus” and thus lacked the “evil motive or reckless indifference to the rights of others” necessary to award punitive damages. The Superior Court disagreed, stating, “[s]imply because Monsanto introduced evidence at trial that it complied with industry standards and scientific consensus, and that Roundup is EPA-approved, does not preclude the jury from awarding punitive damages and does not require the trial court to enter JNOV.”
Monsanto also argued that the lower court wrongly determined in a pretrial ruling that the case could proceed in Philadelphia, which the company said “has no connection” to the case. The appellate panel found no abuse of discretion in the court’s determination that Monsanto failed to show Philadelphia is an “oppressive or vexatious forum.” This ruling continues the recent trend in the Court of Philadelphia Common Pleas to hold onto cases that are filed there despite arising in other counties.
This ruling followed the Superior Court’s 2024 precedential decision in Caranci v. Monsanto, which upheld the USD177.3 million Philadelphia jury verdict and rejected Monsanto’s federal preemption defense under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).
The fundamental tension between Pennsylvania’s state and federal appellate courts on the preemption question persists. The Third Circuit’s 2024 unanimous ruling in Schaffner v. Monsanto that federal law expressly preempts failure-to-warn claims continues to stand in stark contrast to the Pennsylvania Superior Court’s rulings that FIFRA does not bar state failure-to-warn claims.
With additional Roundup verdicts from the Philadelphia mass tort program still on appeal – including the USD2.25 billion verdict (later reduced to USD404 million) and the USD78 million verdict – this area of law remains unsettled and will be closely watched in 2026.
Pennsylvania Supreme Court enforces clickwrap arbitration agreements
In January 2026, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed the Superior Court’s controversial Chilutti v. Uber Technologies, Inc. decision that “clickwrap” arbitration agreements buried in apps’ and websites’ terms of service erode the constitutional right to trial by jury. The Superior Court had ruled in 2023 that Uber could not enforce a binding arbitration agreement contained in hyperlinked terms and conditions, and held that Pennsylvania courts must apply a “stricter burden of proof” when asked to enforce such agreements. Judge McCaffery had written for the Superior Court in a split decision that “[t]he sluggish recognition regarding the copious usage of arbitration agreements in present day contracts and the ramifications of these agreements on a party’s right to a jury trial raises concern, especially in the context of internet contracts – like the one at issue herein – where the parties are of purported unequal bargaining power.” That decision by the Superior Court would have a significant impact on businesses across the country that do business in Pennsylvania using terms and conditions embedded in a “click ‘OK’ to agree to terms” web page.
The Supreme Court reversed, but on procedural grounds, without weighing in on the enforceability of such clickwrap agreements. The high court held that the appeal was premature because the arbitration had not proceeded and the plaintiffs (the Chiluttis) were not yet harmed. The Supreme Court opinion stated: “The trial court granted the petition, stayed the trial court proceeding, and ordered the parties to arbitrate. If the Chiluttis are later aggrieved by the final judgment that the trial court enters after the matter is returned to that court following arbitration, then the Chiluttis can appeal that judgment to the Superior Court.” In a subsequent appeal, the Chiluttis also can challenge the Philadelphia trial court’s April 2021 order compelling arbitration.
The Chilutti decision had created a split between Pennsylvania’s state and federal courts – with common pleas courts following the heightened standard while several federal judges rejected the framework as running afoul of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) and U.S. Supreme Court precedent. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s reversal resolves this split, at least for now, and companies that rely on clickwrap arbitration provisions will want to closely monitor how lower courts interpret and enforce clickwrap agreements going forward.
City of Philadelphia sues PBMs over opioid crisis
The City of Philadelphia’s effort to hold PBMs accountable for the opioid epidemic is heating up. In January 2026, CVS Health Corp. and other PBMs asked a Pennsylvania federal judge to let them out of the city’s lawsuit, arguing that Philadelphia waited too long to file its suit and lacked standing to sue the companies. In February 2026, the city defended its lawsuit, pushing back against the PBMs’ arguments for dismissal. This case represents a novel theory of opioid liability – targeting the middlemen in the pharmaceutical supply chain rather than the manufacturers or distributors – and its outcome could have significant implications for future opioid-related litigation nationwide.