Attorney Michael Whitehill pursues plaintiffs' personal injury cases more passionately than most of his counterparts - and with good reason. At age 6, his mother and sister were killed in a car accident. In those days, automobiles were not equipped with seat belts. That trauma helped him understand the physical and emotional ordeals of the injured and their families.

After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley in 1978, Mr. Whitehill continued his post graduate education at Berkeley, where he attended Boalt Hall School of Law, serving as associate editor for the California Law Review. In addition, he worked part-time for a plaintiff's personal injury firm in Oakland.

Upon graduation in 1981, Mr. Whitehill affiliated with a large law firm in Los Angeles, representing corporate defendants in business disputes. These included insurance claims as well as multi-plaintiff catastrophic personal injury and product liability claims. This corporate work created an epiphany for Mr. Whitehill: His mission in life was to work for injured people and not against them. In 1984 he joined the plaintiff's personal jury firm of Gage & Mazursky in Beverly Hills. At the Gage office, Mr. Whitehill won every jury trial he tried.

In 1988, he and longtime friend and colleague Russell S. Kussman founded the law firm of Kussman & Whitehill, to exclusively represent plaintiffs. Since the start of this synergistic partnership, Mr. Whitehill has obtained numerous multi-million dollar settlements and verdicts in personal injury, product liability and bad-faith insurance cases. At one time, he held the record for the largest individual jury verdict in the history of the Torrance branch of the Los Angeles Superior Court. His client was awarded $12,167,000 in an insurance bad-faith case against Farmers Group, Inc.

Mr. Whitehill has also been involved in several major appellate decisions. In addition, he has lectured and written extensively on the plaintiff's personal injury, product liability, and insurance bad-faith practice. Mr. Whitehill's clients - and those of Kussman & Whitehill in general - receive the highest quality of personalized legal services in a comfortable small-office setting.

Mr. Whitehill was voted one of Los Angeles Magazine's "Super Lawyers" in 2006.

Reported Cases:

• Western Steamship Lines, Inc. v. San Pedro Peninsula Hospital, 8 Cal. 4th 100 (1994)
• Moradi-Shalal v. Fireman's Fund Ins. Companies, 46 Cal. 3d 287 (1988)
• Kibbee v. Blue Ridge Ins. Co., 69 Cal. App. 4th 53 (1999)
• Mogil v. California Physicians Corp., 218 Cal. App. 3d 1030 (1989)
• General Ins. Co. v. MAmmoth Vista Owners Assn. 174 Cal. App. 3d 810 (1985)

Read SuperLawyers article about Kussman & Whitehill