The Los Angeles Area’s Best Lawyers 2006 Survey Results

West – Los Angeles Times Magazine : November 12, 2006

In 1999, attorney Brian Panish secured the largest personal injury verdict in U.S. history as lead counsel in a case against General Motors: a mind-boggling $4.9 billion for a family burned by a defectively designed fuel system. Mr. Panish has obtained over 100 million-dollar-plus verdicts and settlements, including 14 over $10 million. His partner, Adam Shea, is also a record-holder, securing the largest jury verdict in U.S. history – $55 million – in a case involving a tire defect. The pair is flanked by Kevin Boyle, another accomplished trial attorney who clerked for the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist and has sat on plaintiffs’ steering committees involving plane and train accidents. That’s not to mention his own remarkable trial record, with four of the last five cases he’s tried to jury verdict obtaining well over $10 million – each. Together, Mr. Panish, Mr. Shea and Mr. Boyle have obtained over $8 billion in verdicts and settlements for their clients.

The three partners certainly make up an impressive team, helping people around the country who have been catastrophically injured in plane, train and automobile accidents, by defective products, harmful pharmaceuticals and business fraud. Their five-attorney firm, Panish Shea & Boyle, also stands up for the families of those who have been killed through the negligence of others and is committed to one thing and one thing only: justice. And so it really comes as no surprise that the partners have been named as three of the Los Angeles area’s "Best Lawyers®."

Their successes in the courtroom and at the negotiating table have definitely not gone unnoticed, and the firm was named in October 2005 to the National Law Journal’s "Plaintiffs’ Hot List" – a list of the top 12 plaintiffs’ firms in the country. Incidentally, theirs was the only Los Angeles firm selected for the list. And earlier this year the NLJ named Mr. Panish one of the 100 most influential attorneys in America and he was accepted into the Inner Circle of Advocates in 2004 – a highly coveted society made up of the nation’s top 100 civil trial attorneys.

But recognition by their peers and in the media is just an added benefit that comes with the territory. What really matters – and what keeps these three coming to work every day – is their overriding desire to stand up for the everyday person facing terrible circumstances, through no fault of their own. When all is said and done, it’s about making a difference by punishing companies that put profits ahead of safety. That, say the three, is their job’s ultimate reward.

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