Brian J. Panish

Famed tort attorney Brian Panish has represented plaintiffs in many mass tort cases, including those from the major California fires over the last several years. Now, he is taking on the electric utilities believed at fault in the catastrophic Maui wildfires this summer that killed at least 100 people and destroyed much of a historic town.

He already is representing hundreds of people and businesses, he said, and more cases are being filed regularly. Judge Peter T. Cahill, who is overseeing the state court litigation in Maui, is planning to set multiple cases for trial in September and October this year. “It’s going much quicker here,” Panish said, than in some other fire cases. In the Manner of the Petition for the Coordination of Maui Fire Cases, 2CSP-23-57 (2nd Circ. Ct. of Hawaii, hearing Jan. 2, 2024).

Settlements are likely, he said. Panish was the lead trial counsel in the Southern California Gas Leak litigation over the 2015 natural gas storage tank failure in Aliso Canyon. Some six years and $5 million in discovery sanctions against the defense later, he and his team brought in a $1.8 billion settlement. “Most of the money has been disbursed,” he said, but they are still working on newly filed cases.

He also wins and settles individual plaintiffs’ injury cases. In January, a judge approved a $32 million settlement from Tulare County after its child welfare department failed to prevent the parents of a baby boy from essentially starving the boy almost to death. The settlement is believed to be the largest ever obtained against a child protective agency by a surviving child of abuse in California. In addition, the settlement requires the county to upgrade its policies and case monitoring systems. J.G. v. County of Tulare, VCU286277 (Tulare Super. Ct., filed Dec. 28, 2021).

His firm also has filed several other actions against the county and its child welfare department.

Panish also has had great success winning large personal injury verdicts. In October, he and his colleagues achieved a $135 million verdict for two men who had been abused by their sixth-grade teacher in the mid-1990s. He said the case was one of the first to be tried under a “look-back” statute that gave victims a three-year window to file suit over abuse from years before. Blair v. Moreno Valley School District, CVRI2102718 (Riv. Super. Ct., June 7, 2021).

— Don DeBenedictis