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October 2009 William M. Shernoff
Shernoff is on the forefront of litigation against insurance companies that seek to cancel policies of sick patients on grounds of misrepresentation in the application. In March, he won a $9.5 million arbitration award against Health Net on behalf of a breast cancer patient. The company had rescinded her policy while she was undergoing chemotherapy, and the arbitrator awarded punitive damages. The win came a month after Shernoff secured a class action settlement, also with Health Net, in which the company agreed to stop paying its employees bonuses to cancel policies and to offer coverage to hundreds of people whose policies it had rescinded. The insurer also agreed to pay at least $13 million in damages to people whose policies had been rescinded. He currently is representing consumers in dozens of rescission lawsuits. |
Mr. Shernoff's career has been distinguished by multi-million dollar verdicts and precedent-setting case law. He is credited with pioneering bad faith insurance law with his 1979 victory, Egan v. Mutual of Omaha. |
