The Trial & Insurance Practice Group at Hill Wallack LLP handles the defense of first and third-party claims from catastrophic to conventional regarding personal injury, property damage, premises liability, products liability, construction defects, business operations, fraud, and other common torts such as automobile or trucking accidents. Our practice involves the representation of insurance companies and self-insureds in defense of such matters. We also defend professional liability claims; and on the non-profit side of the business world, we have represented and successfully defended directors, officers and not-for-profit corporations and associations in tort, contractual and fiduciary claims. We routinely represent school districts, academic institutions, first responding agencies (fire, police, EMS) in service and non-service related matters. As such, we represent carriers that insure governmental entities against constitutional, civil rights and statutory tort claims. The firm has particular expertise in Title 59 of the New Jersey Statutes as well as federal claims including Section 1983 (federal civil rights) claims including police liability, excessive use of force, and illegal government police and practices.

Similarly, our attorneys have extensive experience in defending commercial, business and residential owners, landlords, property managers and maintenance contractors where we focus on risk shifting via contractual indemnification, additional insured claims and/or breach of insurance procurement clauses. The Group also has extensive experience defending various media defendants and private individuals in defamation matters. In those circumstances where clients are faced with situations not strictly within the parameters of the Trial & Insurance Practice Group, our attorneys can call upon the talents and experience of other attorneys in the firm concentrating in such areas as:

• Employment
• Commercial transactions
• Municipal law
• Real estate
• Corporate
• Banking and secured transactions
• Bankruptcy and debtor-creditor relations
• Intellectual property
• Federal and state taxation
• Administrative law

Team Approach

The ability to draw from a wide range of legal resources is the cornerstone of our "team" approach to the practice of law and enables us to offer needed perspective and advice on the full spectrum of our clients' business objectives, resulting in strategies which are often lacking in the conventional attorney-client relationship.

The Trial & Insurance Defense Practice Group at Hill Wallack LLP views its role not simply as attorneys, but as creative professionals whose primary concern is to:

• Find opportunities
• Initiate new approaches
• Achieve results

The Group is led by partners who jointly have well over 100 years of trial and appellate experience in both federal and state courts. Our attorneys are also members of the Claims & Litigation Management Alliance, Defense Research Institute, the New Jersey Defense Association, and New Jersey State Bar Association.