Shernoff

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William M. Shernoff

Shernoff, Bidart, Darras & Arkin

Specialty: Insurance law

Law School: University of Wisconsin, 1962

Ralph Nader calls William Shernoff “the man who has rattled more non-paying insurance companies than anyone else in the country.” Shernoff is, in fact, a pioneer in the field of bad-faith insurance litigation.

He won his first bad-faith case in 1971, representing a farm worker who had been denied disability payments. He got his client the benefits, plus $325,000.

“Having grown up in a farming community, I had empathy for the hard-working farmer, so I was outraged at the attitude of the insurance company,” Shernoff said.

As for how he came to specialize in insurance law, Shernoff says: “It picked me. I had one case against an insurance company that returned a big verdict against Mutual of Omaha. It went to the (U.S.) Supreme Court, and I was hooked.”

Since early in his career, which was spent with fellow top-flight litigator Herbert Hafif, he has gone on to represent billionaire Marvin Davis and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. But Shernoff insists the vast majority of his clients are just “regular people” who have become victims of egregious bad faith.

Last year, he successfully tried a class-action suit brought against Allstate Insurance Group, on behalf of his clients 10,000 disgruntled policyholders whose homes were damaged in the Northridge earthquake. Allstate has already paid out $1.7 billion in claims resulting from the quake. Under terms of the ruling, the insurer is being required to re-evaluate many of the claims, which Shernoff estimates could lead to Allstate paying an additional $150 million.

Shernoff also took Italian life insurer Generali Assicurazioni to court for its refusal to pay on a Hungarian holocaust victim’s policy. The case continues this year and is slated to be heard in California Superior Court.

Shernoff has authored several books on how to get claims paid. He is particularly interested in health care insurance reform. “We’ve got to change the law and allow victims to sue HMOs and collect general and punitive damages,” he says.

Margot Carmichael Lester

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