William M. Shernoff

The consumer attorney behind a landmark 1979 case widely credited as pioneering insurance bad faith — one of the few new tort laws of the 20th century — was busy battling insurers again this year. Setting his sights on the previously little-known industry practice of rescission — in which health plans retroactively cancel coverage after a person submits costly claims — he started representing cancelled policyholders, whose compelling stories became the basis of media investigations. This year, an arbitrator ordered Health Net Inc. to pay $9.4 million in damages and expenses to his client, a cancer patient, for canceling her policy after she fell ill. As a result, the state’s health regulators reached a settlement to return coverage to more than 3,000 California policyholders.