Georgia plaintiffs attorney Jim Butler Jr. has added another $100 million verdict to his resume—this time in a case over damage to land he once co-owned with his former law partners.

While groups like the American Tort Reform Association have panned what they call “absurd nuclear verdicts”—those exceeding $10 million—a federal jury was convinced that the regression of a 21-acre lake into what the complaint described as “a mud hole” was not only avoidable, but also intentional.