Insurance/Bad Faith Attorney

Serious lawyers for serious injuries and specialists in bad faith insurance litigation.

We have an outstanding record in collecting full damages in bad faith insurance cases, even though the wrongdoer's insurance coverage is insufficient to fully satisfy the injury that has been caused.

Great lawyering skills are not going to make a difference when the wrongdoer has low limits of insurance coverage.

The lawyers of Alexander Hawes are leaders in insurance bad faith cases that maximize recoveries in serious personal injury cases. In many cases, the recoveries are much greater than assets or the insurance coverage of the person at fault.

In our experience, most people have little or no accident claims experience. They make tragic mistakes speaking to adjusters that easily could have been avoided and they give up major rights when they speak freely. Please don't make that mistake.

Please email or call 888.777.1776 to find out "what not to do" and "what you must do."

The sad truth is that people who cause serious injuries and wrongful deaths never have enough insurance coverage.

Most have minimal insurance limits of liability. $15,000 per person and $30,000 per accident is common. In more affluent cases $100,000 policies are encountered. They own little, so there is nothing to collect, except their low limit insurance coverage.

That's devastating news for a person who has suffered a permanent, lifetime disability.

Clients of Alexander Hawes, LLP have recovered millions, far in excess of the insurance coverage of the person at fault because they talked to us early and followed our advice.

We use the insurance laws to protect our clients and have brought in "full value" recoveries many times the available insurance policy limits. For example [partial list]:

Years of representing clients with challenging cases has taught us that unless clients are protected from the outset with full and complete advice on their rights under the insurance laws, they make it impossible for anyone to collect all of the damage they have suffered.

In many cases, full and fair value can be recovered once an insurance company rejects a fair and reasonable offer to settle for policy limits, providing that settlement offer meets the requirements under the insurance laws for "good faith settlement offers."

When an insurance company fails to follow the law, it becomes liable for the full value of the claim even if the value of the claim is far in excess of the policy limits.

Once a legally correct policy limits settlement offer is rejected by an insurance company, the insurance company is gambling with its own money. That's the law.

To qualify for a full value recovery in excess of the at fault party's insurance policy limits:

• Never try to settle a claim by yourself; and
• Call us for free advice before you speak to the other side's insurance company.

Any lawyer can collect policy limits of $100,000 when the damages are in the millions.

Our goal is to collect all the damages.

There is no guarantee we can do this for you, but we can give you the opportunity to do so. If we can settle your case with a letter demanding policy limits and the insurance company agrees to pays its policy limits by our deadline, there are no attorneys' fees. The focus of our practice, as our track record shows, is to help individuals and their families after devastating trauma has ruined their lives.

Our goal is to make a substantial financial difference in their lives and to restore, to the full extent of the law, what has been taken from them.

We know that our clients need a result that will last a lifetime because spinal cord damage, like all serious injuries, lasts a lifetime.

Our report on Rasheed Hilson's $10.1 million judgment is important reading for you. It explains what can be done where there is insufficient insurance coverage.

In Rasheed's case we went to trial and secured a $10.1 million judgment for a severely brain injured 12 year-old boy. The left side of his body is paralyzed and he is confined to bed and a wheelchair.

Before we filed, the defendant's insurance company refused to pay its $50,000 policy to Rasheed to settle all claims because it thought it could defense a case of a 12 year-old boy running directly into traffic.

To put in perspective how insurance claims adjusters work, Rasheed's medical bills for two months totaled $735,000, he will never work and a full-time assistant will be necessary for the rest of his life.

Rasheed should have received more, but he was found by the jury to have been 65% at fault in causing his own injuries. $10.1 million is 35% of $29 million, which more closely approximates his actual losses.

George Liu's video and case report explains in detail how we were able to recover $4,470,000 from an insurance company's treasury, in addition to its $30,000 policy for George's L-1 paraplegia.

George became a paraplegic while following a van on his motorcycle on a curving city street. As the street curved, the van blocked his view of a 1989 Honda making an illegal u-turn from the far right lane. The van skidded to a stop and avoided hitting the Honda. George stopped too and his motorcycle never hit the van, but he stopped so suddenly he was thrown over the handlebars and into the rear doors of the van. When he landed on the street, he was paralyzed and had shattered his L-1 vertebrae.

Before filing suit, George offered to settle all claims against the 19 year-old driver of the 1989 Honda with his insurance company for the Honda's policy limits. After suit was filed, the Honda driver confirmed in writing under oath that he only had $30,000 in insurance coverage.

During the year between the crash and an early trial date, the insurance company made no settlement offer to George even though the company had not acted in good faith and George would be a paraplegic and in a wheelchair for life. After trial started and half of our witnesses had testified, the insurance company's executive committee put $4.5 million on the table, which George accepted.

Both George Liu and Rasheed Hilson show the quality of our work supporting survivors of devastating injuries.

Our proof in all major injury cases calls upon a strong team of experts: crash reconstructionists, biomechanical engineers, metallurgists, materials science engineers, physiatrists, neurologists, neuropsychologists, psychiatrists, occupational and rehabilitation therapists, lifecare planners and economists. We hire the most highly qualified experts to provide state-of-the-art scientific evidence. That is the reason our track record is unmatched. It contains full details of case outcomes and recoveries for our clients.

Results for clients in other cases include:

• $15,500,000 for terrible burns suffered by a technician working on a reported "de-energized" 12,000 volt circuit that exploded in his face.
• $11,000,000 in a multi-vehicle auto-truck collision that resulted in C-5/C-6 spinal cord injuries.
• $3,500,000 recovery for a 19 year-old passenger in a rollover who suffered a tragic C-7 spinal cord injury and miraculously regained the ability to walk.
• $5,000,000 for an 18 year-old C-7 quadriplegia survivor of a vehicle rollover.
• $8,132,000 jury verdict for a 15 year-old boy who suffered a major brain injury that has resulted in permanent wheelchair confinement.
• $5,200,000 insurance bad faith and injury recovery collected for a wonderful San Jose couple that suffered a severe brain injury and facial and orthopedic fractures, including the loss of an eye.
• $4,250,000 recovery for a five year-old child who suffered severe brain injury from exposure to methanol fumes and gallium arsenide dust during pregnancy.
• $2,250,000 for a brain-damaged teenager injured by a teenage driver who was intoxicated on beer illegally sold to him by Shortstop.
• $1,750,000 for multiple fractures and brain injuries caused by an illegal CHP pursuit of an escapee from the Youth Authority.
• $2,750,000 for a two year-old who suffered a brain injury in an automobile-pedestrian collision.
• $1,000,000 recovery for brain injury suffered by a 16 year-old thrown from a utility vehicle in a rollover.
• $1,800,000 for a child exposed to solvents during pregnancy causing brain damage.
• $1,000,000 for a guest on a Liberty Ship, the S. S. Jeremiah O'Brien in San Francisco Bay, who fainted and fell five feet from a hatch cover used for seating during the cruise, struck the steel deck and suffered brain damage.

We have achieved outstanding results in challenging liability cases, because unlike most personal injury lawyers, we don't accept all clients.

We are a specialized personal injury law firm that focuses on winning major injury cases and because we have a limited number of clients.

We devote substantial resources to state-of-the-art proof of liability and employ leading experts to prove liability and the cost of long-term care and lost income as a result of serious disability.

We work hard to leave nothing to chance and three lawyers are responsible for case management with monthly reviews to make sure everything stays on track. You always have a lawyer available to you, even when we are in court, out of the office taking depositions or meeting with experts working on our proof for you.

We are experienced trial lawyers. Fewer and fewer lawyers are trying lawsuits in the last ten years. We have brought in verdicts for clients facing lifetime disability for millions of dollars and the insurance industry and defense bar knows that we are always prepared and always negotiate from a position of strength. That maximizes recoveries for our clients.

We are top-rated by independent rating agencies such as Martindale-Hubbell, Avvo.com, Preeminent Law Firms in the United States and Super Lawyers of Northern California.

More important to us are our client reports and videos that you will find on this website.

Bar associations have recognized us as specialists by bestowing multiple awards: Trial Lawyer of the Year and multiple nominations for the coveted Street Fighter of the Year. We also are listed in the 100 Top California Trial Lawyers by the American Trial Lawyers Association.

Richard Alexander, our founder, was featured in San Jose Magazine for his incomparable record and passion for his clients.

The members of our firm have received the Youth Commission Medal, the Man of the Year Award by the Women's Fund, the Santa Clara School of Law award for dedication to workers who have suffered injustice and the Pro Bono Award from the Santa Clara Center for Occupational Safety and Health.

We contribute to public education with our Injury Library and in our regularly updated blog that provides timely information, explaining the law and providing practical answers in the field of personal injury litigation. It is must reading for anyone facing a lifetime disability.

If you or a member of your family have suffered a catastrophic injury and are facing a lifetime disability, please contact us now by email or call 888.777.1776 .

Our goal is to make a difference for you.

We can only do that if you talk to us first.

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