Attorney William Shernoff

Are you pushed to the wall because your medical insurance company has you by the short hairs?  You’re not alone.  Millions face a dead end when claiming what is rightfully theirs from insurance companies: Prompt payment for their medical services; fair evaluations of medical conditions; proper care and treatment for life-threatening illness, or catastrophic accident injury; coverage for long-term treatment, disability, or wrongful death due to the negligence of another; each one devastating for those involved.  So, why is it that here in AMERICA people must bury their sorrow and over-ride their health problems, in order to fight with their insurance companies over the help and treatment they need?  Meet the man who challenges all those underhanded tactics by all of those monstrous health insurance companies—and wins!  Los Angeles, and now Beverly Hills-based  attorney, William Shernoff. 

Senior/managing partner of Shernoff Bidart Darras & Echeverria LLP—a  law firm known as the ‘bad faith insurance  lawyers’ Shernoff heads a team of 10 premier litigation attorneys who get victims what is legally theirs.  And, forget that ungodly ‘hourly-rate-fee’ nightmare that most people face in litigation.  Shernoff and his team don’t fool around; they go to court to win.  If they don’t win…they don’t get paid.  

Shernoff’s mission to bust wide open all the illegal practices of insurance companies began in 1971, with his first  insurance case.  It was a brutal, eye- opening realization of the corruption behind insurance giants, and the under- handed, strong-arm, dishonest tactics they did to get out of paying claims of policy holders; the worst being to cancel policies of critically ill people clinging to the hope that a correct diagnosis by qualified doctors and proper medical treatment would save their lives.  There was no going back.  Shernoff took off taking insurance bad faith cases and pioneering this new field of law.  In 1979, he made international headlines by winning a landmark case for the MGM Grand Hotel, in Las Vegas ($86 million settlement), involving failure to pay insurance proceeds due to a fire at the hotel.  That same year the California Supreme Court handed down a record-setting punitive damage award for another of his cases (Egan v. Mutual of Omaha).  The landmark decision was so substantial it set a precedent for all of the ‘bad faith‘ insurance disputes to this very day.  

Another high-profile case that thrust Shernoff into the international spotlight: a jury awarded his clients (the American Samoa Government) $100 million for devastation caused by a hurricane.  Then, the granddaddy of law- suits was when Shernoff represented California Holocaust survivors who claimed life insurance benefits were due them from European insurance companies.  Life insurance proceeds were never paid the beneficiaries of those who died in concentration camps. Shernoff’s lawsuits on behalf of the survivors spawned a five billion dollar settlement which was distributed to survivors worldwide.  He went on to receive the 2002 Trial Lawyers of the Year honor by the California Consumer Attorneys Association for the headline making, unprecedented case.  

A documentary of his Holocaust case was filmed and purchased by Sony pictures.  The film “On Moral Ground”  is in development for a theatrical movie for Sony pictures.  Michael Moore  the mega filmmaker/director consulted with Shernoff and credited him for working on the documentary, “Sicko”.