The lawyers of Alexander Hawes are leaders in maximizing recoveries for who have suffered catastrophic spinal cord injuries:

In 99% of all major injury claims there never is enough insurance coverage to pay all the bills and the damage that has been inflicted.

The wrongdoers who cause major injuries never have enough money to pay for hundreds of thousands in medical care, the future cost of lifetime care or a lifetime of lost earnings.

That is the devastating truth when you have suffered a spinal cord injury.

Only rarely have we sued a responsible trucking company, major utility, an automobile manufacturer, a city or county government or a national corporation for causing a spinal cord or brain injury.

When clients have contacted us immediately after being injured, we have been able to use California's insurance laws to protect their rights and that has allowed us to collect millions more than insurance policies provide when insurance companies break the law and violate the covenant of good faith and fair dealing.

If you or a member of your family has suffered a spinal cord injury, please don't make the mistake that many well-educated people unintentionally make and lose the right to collect full value for a spinal cord injury.

Please contact us or call 1.888.777.1776 and find out "what not to do" and "what you should do."

Years of representing survivors of spinal cord injuries has taught us that unless you are protected from the outset with full and complete advice on your rights under California's insurance laws, great lawyering skills are not going to make a significant difference for you when the insurance coverage is minimal compared to the harm inflicted.

A full and fair value can be recovered after an insurance company rejects a fair and reasonable offer to settle for policy limits, providing that offer meets the technical requirements of California law for "good faith settlement offers."

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

Anyone can collect policy limits of $100,000 when the damages are in the millions. Our goal is to collect all the damage that has been caused.

There is no guarantee we can do this for your spinal injury.

We do guarantee that we can give you the opportunity to collect full value, if you follow our advice.

Our experience, extraordinary resources and readiness have earned us a national reputation and a national practice representing plaintiffs in spinal cord and brain injury cases for more than 25 years.

We are a specialty California law firm representing individuals and families who have suffered grievous losses.

The focus of our practice 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 brain 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 this case we took to trial, verdict and secured a judgment for a severely brain injured 12 year-old boy with a left-hemiparesis that confines him to bed and a wheelchair. Before we filed, the defendant's insurance company refused to pay its $50,000 to Rasheed to settle all claims. To put that in perspective, 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.

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 and 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, we 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 defendant 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 of damages in both spinal cord injuries and traumatic brain injuries calls upon a similar 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 our clients include:

• $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 spinal C-7 spinal cord injury and miraculously regained the ability to walk.
• $5,000,000 for à C-7 quadriplegia survivor of a vehicle rollover.
• $8,132,000 jury verdict for a 15 year-old boy who suffered major brain injury.
• $5,200,000 insurance bad faith and injury recovery collected for a wonderful San Jose couple who 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 brain injury to 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 million for a guest on a Liberty Ship the S. S. Jeremiah O'Brien in San Francisco Bay who fell from a hatch cover used for seating during the cruise.

We have achieved outstanding results in challenging liability setting, 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 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 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, and Preeminent Law Firms in the United States. But 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 100 Top California Trial Lawyers by the American Trial Lawyers Association and are recognized as Super Lawyers of Northern California.

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 have suffered a catastrophic injury and are facing a lifetime disability, please contact us now by email or call 1.888.777.1776.

Our goal is to make a difference for you.