Personal Injury Litigators of 2010
Plaintiffs’ law firm Panish, Shea & Boyle (PS&B) works relentlessly to obtain justice for their injured clients. And they have succeeded. Indeed, there have been four personal injury jury verdicts in the State of California that have exceeded $50 million. The firm’s lawyers have obtained three of those four. Other successes include the largest single-plaintiff personal injury verdict in California history at the time ($58 million), as well as the largest products liability personal injury verdict in U.S. history at the time ($4.9 billion). The firm’s attorneys have obtained over 15 verdicts or settlements in excess of $10 million, and over 150 in excess of $1 million. The firm’s track record increases the value of all of the firm’s cases in the eyes of insurance companies, corporations, and government entities. “I often hear stories of other lawyers getting their cases settled by threatening to bring Panish, Shea & Boyle ‘into the case’,” says The Hon. Peter Polos (Ret.), who joined the firm this year after retiring from the California bench.
“Other retired Judges often inform me that our settlements get top-dollar due to the ‘Panish Premium’,” added Adam Shea, to which Polos agreed. While a Judge, Polos had watched many trial lawyers in the community, and when he was ready to step down from the bench, he “wanted to go with the best trial lawyers out there”, he said. Not many firms can offer a preview of the judicial perspective. “The addition of Judge Polos to the firm is an indication of the extra lengths we go to for our clients,” says Brian Panish.
This is all a part of PS&B’s methodical focus on seeking full compensation for those who have been catastrophically injured in plane, train, and automobile accidents, by defective products, harmful pharmaceuticals, and business fraud. Working on a contingency basis (that is, the client does not pay unless there is success), the firm represents a wide array of people and families ranging from below-the-poverty line immigrants to moguls of the entertainment industry and titans of corporate America, with the common thread being that they’ve all found themselves in the worst situation imaginable through the action (or inactions) of others.
The aggressive firm embraces trial where most others would choose to seek settlement. The firm recently obtained a $21 million verdict for an Iraqi war vet who was injured in an automobile accident after coming home from his fourth tour of duty. “That was a case in which most firms would have taken the substantial settlement offer without trial—but we got multiples,” says Kevin Boyle. All three partners – Adam Shea, Kevin Boyle, and Brian Panish—have been selected for inclusion in the Los Angeles area’s Best Lawyers®, to add to the other accolades they’ve collected over the years. For example, the “100 Most Influential Lawyers in Nation” by The National Law Journal, Trial Lawyer of the Year by the Consumer Attorneys of Los Angeles, and the “Top 100 Lawyers in California” by the Daily Journal. The firm itself was the only Los Angeles area law firm to be named a “Top 12 Plaintiffs Law Firms in the Nation” by the NLJ.
