Joel Cohen is a law and motion and appellate lawyer in the Firm's Law & Motion Department. Mr. Cohen is part of the team that has recovered tens of millions of dollars for insureds whose health insurance policies were unlawfully rescinded by their insurers.  Mr. Cohen is also active in the efforts to obtain justice for beneficiaries of Holocaust-era life insurance policies.

On behalf of his own clients, and as liaison counsel for hundreds of other plaintiffs in coordinated earthquake actions alleging improper claims-handling practices by insurers, Mr. Cohen was one of the chief lawyers responsible for briefing and arguing a wide range of legal and constitutional issues before the Los Angeles County complex litigation trial court and the state and federal courts of appeal.

Of particular importance, before the California Court of Appeal, Mr. Cohen briefed and argued Kapsimallis v. Allstate (2002), which established that the statute of limitations for property damage claims caused by catastrophic events such as earthquakes does not begin to run until the insured reasonably discovers appreciable damage. The Kapsimallis decision meant that large numbers of insureds whose earthquake claims were improperly denied as time-barred could sue their insurers for breach of contract and bad faith.

The decision also set the precedent establishing the standard that insurers must apply in calculating the timeliness of property damage claims resulting from future similar events.

In another significant case which reached the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the California Supreme Court, Mr. Cohen wrote the final brief before the federal Court, which resulted in a decision holding that an insurer could be prevented from raising a statute of limitations defense if the insured's delayed claim resulted from his reliance on the insurer's factual misrepresentations about the amount of damage. Vu v. Prudential (2002).

In the coordinated earthquake actions before the complex litigation trial court, Mr. Cohen also successfully argued that the Legislature's revival of punitive damage claims against insurers who denied claims in bad faith did not violate the Constitution's prohibition on laws that impose retroactive punishment.

Mr. Cohen also has extensive experience in briefing and arguing the propriety of class actions as a means to redress common patterns of insurer misconduct.

Mr. Cohen has contributed to the Advocate, the journal of the Consumer Attorneys Associations for Southern California. He has also participated in community and public service work. He received a citation from the Los Angeles Police Commission in recognition of his assistance to the Office of the Special Advisor to the Board of Police Commissioners (chaired by former federal judge and FBI and CIA Director William Webster), which issued a report concerning the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.

Mr. Cohen is admitted to the State Bar of California, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States District Court, Central District of California. He is a member of the American Bar Association, the Los Angeles County Bar Association, the San Fernando Valley Bar Association, and the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles.