The Trial & Insurance Defense Practice Group at Hill Wallack LLP defends claims for catastrophic personal injury and property damage, as well as for economic damages stemming from products liability, premises liability, construction defects and conventional torts. Our practice involves the representation of insurance companies and self-insureds in defense of professional liability claims against architects, engineers, attorneys and other licensed professionals. 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.

Representative Matters

In addition, we represent carriers that insure governmental entities against constitutional, civil rights and statutory tort claims. The firm has particular expertise in Section 1983 (federal civil rights) claims, including:

• Those related to police liability
• Claims involving search and seizure
• Excessive use of force
• Claims alleging illegal government policy and custom

Similarly, our attorneys have extensive experience in defending owners, tenants, property managers and maintenance contractors (i.e. snow and ice removal, landscapers) with respect to premises liability claims, including risk shifting via contractual indemnification, additional insured claims and/or breach of insurance procurement clauses.

We also defend various media defendants in defamation matters. In those circumstances where clients are faced with situations not strictly within the parameters of the Trial & Insurance Defense Practice Group, our attorneys can call upon the talents and experience of other attorneys in the firm concentrating in such areas as:

• Insurance
• Product liability
• 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. The firm is also a member of the Claims & Litigation Management Alliance.