Linda Bollea has reached a settlement in the civil suit filed on behalf of John Graziano, according to her attorney. Graziano suffered severe brain injuries while riding in a car driven by Bolea's son in August 2007 when Nick crashed into a tree while speeding. Nick Bollea served 166 days of an 8-month sentence after pleading no contest to a charge of reckless driving involving serious bodily injury. He was released in October 2009.

Linda Bollea's confidential settlement was reached six months after her divorce from her husband Terry, better known as Hulk Hogan. Hogan and his son Nick were also named in the lawsuit. There's no word on where the rest of the case stands.

We're sorry to rain on the parade of the ten contract workers who won a $100 million verdict against energy company BP in a Galveston federal district court on Friday, but the chances of that verdict surviving intact are pretty slim. That's because all but $300,000 of that amount represents punitive damages. If you compute the ratio of punitive to actual damages, you get 333 to 1, which is not a ratio that many courts will look favorably on. In addition, Texas caps punitive damages in most cases at $200,000 per plaintiff.

Still, that verdict should get the attention of BP, which faces similar claims by an additional 133 workers. All claim to have been injured by a toxic chemical release at BP's troubled Texas City oil refinery in 2007. Click here for an account of the verdict by the Houston Chronicle.

We talked on Monday to plaintiffs lawyer Anthony Buzbee of Galveston's Buzbee Law Firm, who represents the 10 workers who won the verdict, as well as the other 133. "The whole purpose of the case was to punish BP," said Buzbee. "I was very upfront [with the jury] that this was a punitive damages case." He admits that his clients' injuries were minor: All were released from the hospital the same day they were admitted. But, he contended, BP has a history of safety violations at this plant that it refuses to remedy. The Texas City refinery is the same facility where 15 workers were killed in a 2005 explosion, leading the company to pay $2 billion in private damages and a $50 million criminal fine (see third item). Federal and state regulators, he contended, are unwilling or unable to force the company to improve the safety of its working conditions. (The company is fighting an $87 million fine imposed this year by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.)

Read more at
http://www.law.com/jsp/tal/digestTAL.jsp?id=1202437108572&BPs__Million_Personal_Injury_Verdict_Nearly_All_Punitives