Over the past two and a half years, Pennsylvania trial courts saw a run of blockbuster verdicts, with juries awarding at least $4.64 billion from the second half of 2023 to 2025.

While that pace has cooled over the past year, these awards have begun working through the post-trial and appellate phases, where, according to a review of the data and interviews with attorneys, judges have been increasingly willing to scrutinize—and in many cases substantially reduce—some of the region's largest verdicts.

Leah Mintz, a partner at Duane Morris in Philadelphia, shared that reductions in verdicts at the trial court level aren't common and that it’s a high standard for judges to reduce jury verdicts.

“I think we’ve also been seeing an enhanced level of awareness by the judiciary of these runaway verdicts that are not tied to anything that could reasonably be deemed compensatory or punitive in the case of punitive damages," she said. "So, I think, although it’s rare, it’s becoming more common because some of the jury verdicts have been outsized compared to jury verdicts in the past.”

According to Mintz, there seems to be “an increased awareness among the judiciary of the role that they play as a check, or a backstop, on some of the patterns that we’re seeing.”

“I think you’re also just seeing general recognition of some of the dangers of these outsized verdicts and nuclear verdicts, and judges are looking closely at the appellate level and at the trial level to make sure that the jury instructions and the trial procedure was handled correctly,” Mintz said. "So, I think there is a recognition among trial court judges and appellate judges of the numbers getting out of hand."

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