The billions are back. After a drop in 2015, which saw a top verdict of only $845 million, four verdicts in 2016 came in at more than a billion dollars each, according to the annual Top 100 Verdicts by ALM’s VerdictSearch. The largest went to a computer company that alleged a software developer had breached a settlement agreement. The jury in Hewlett-Packard v. Oracle awarded Hewlett-Packard $3.01 billion.
Jeff Thomas, a partner in the Irvine, California, office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, who represented HP, said while this verdict is large by any standard, it’s especially so for what was essentially “a good old-fashioned breach-of-contract case.”
