Man in the Arena

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Man in the Arena

Dan Baldwin • Jan 31, 2022

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H. Gavin Long

Bisnar Chase

1301 Dove Street
Suite 120

Newport Beach, CA 92660

949-752-2999

BestAttorney.com

Doing the Right Thing for the Underdog at Bisnar Chase

"It’s always David and Goliath. Our clients are always the underdog, and they are under tremendous pressure. Part of my job with a plaintiff who has been mistreated is to reassure them that they are doing the right thing, that they are in the right and that I am their champion in this battle,” says H. Gavin Long, Partner and Trial Lawyer at Bisnar Chase Personal Injury Attorneys.

Long has a wide range of jury trial experience in cases from murder and fraud to medical malpractice in state and federal courts. He is known for taking personal injury cases to trial and has consistently obtained verdicts above the defendant’s offer, beating the plaintiff’s CCP 998 and busting wide open the defendant’s insurance policies.

“Being a trial lawyer fits my personality. For me, it’s the best job I could have. I get a lot of satisfaction when an insurance company has to pay a large jury verdict out of its own pocket (on top of the policy limits) because they would not pay the policy limits. Bisnar Chase is one of the top law firms in California and also has a national presence. Ten years ago, I saw an ad in the Daily Journal for an attorney position and decided to take my shot. Fortunately, I got the job amongst 50-60 applicants,” he says.

Crushing the Competition

One of the ways Long and his firm crush the competition is their willingness to not only go that extra mile for their clients, but to take the journey into new territory. Their nationally recognized and innovative use of crash test dummies in cases involving vehicles is a perfect example.

Long cites cases in which a roof-crush severely injured a client. In such cases, they find a match for the truck that was involved in the incident and recreate the accident. They and their experts flip the vehicle, drop it on its roof, and examine the exact kind of damage caused.

“We invest hundreds of thousands of dollars doing crash testing in our auto defect cases. We become like a mini auto manufacturer and prove through testing we can make cars safer for consumers. We do car-to-car crash tests to mimic an actual crash. We buy SUV’s and drop them on their roofs to show roof crush and alternative designs. We do sled testing with hybrid III fully instrumented crash test dummies to show how we can create safer seats, and so on and so on,” he says.

It’s an expensive process. Not only does the firm have to purchase an exemplar vehicle, they also have to go to the considerable expense of the recreation. They hire professionals who can provide validated information acceptable in a court of law. People involved in the testing may include a reconstructionist, a bio-mechanic, and experts on such specific items as roofs, seats, seatbelts and on other elements of automobiles and other vehicles.

“You’re trying to recreate what happens to people in crashes without using real people. It has a dramatic impact on a jury when they see how violently a dummy (like a person) is affected,” Long says.

The Advantage of Experience

Actually, going to trial is rare throughout the nation and California is no exception. Therefore, very few attorneys actually acquire a significant amount of trial experience. Long is an exception.

“I heard a statistic that 91% of trials in California are tried by only 300 attorneys. There’s just not a lot of experience to go around. A lot of lawyers market themselves as trial attorneys, but we actually do it. We have three ABOTA attorneys here and that’s a lot for a firm of this size and I’m proud to be one of them,” Long says.

Trial experience is more than assurance for the client; it is a powerful force for the opposing side to face. Long says, “If your opposition doesn’t think you are going to fight, that you don’t have the resources to fight, you’re never going to get a good settlement; they’re not going to offer your client any real money. Then if you try the case, at that point you have to have done the work—put in the time, energy, money and whatever we need. We have the lawyers who have the skills to actually try cases.”

A Big Win for the Little Guy

He cites a particularly challenging case and an example of the value in trial experience—a case in which he won the largest verdict against a rehab facility in California at that time.

John Cunningham was a 35-year Boeing employee with a wife of 25 years and two teenage daughters. He was in good shape and worked out with weights. He got aches and pains and eventually became addicted to pain medication. When someone is on pain medication their anxiety kicks up. While still working, he also became addicted to anxiety medication. He was a functioning prescription drug user.

The addiction became a problem. He began acting out, not eating, not sleeping, and exhibiting other addictive traits. Cunningham realized he had a problem and he decided to get off the drugs. He had a lot of plans. He was about to retire. He and his wife were looking at buying property in Idaho.

In the course of getting off the pills, his wife found a rehab facility, which looked good from the advertisements. He went to the facility which immediately transferred him to a detox center. There are two parts to the rehab process. One, is detoxing from the substance. And then there’s the rehab where the client learns how to avoid a relapse. The rehab center sent Cunningham to a detox center for the first stage of treatment. It was later determined that all the clients of the center needing detox were sent to this facility. Part of the arrangement was a guarantee that the patient would be sent back to the referring facility after the detox period.

The detox facility was staffed with unqualified people. After the initial screening, he never saw a doctor and his withdrawal (detox) wasn’t properly managed. The effect of their neglect was to torture the patient by keeping him in a constant state of pain—delusion, vomiting, isolation, tremors and shaking. “I don’t care how tough you are, after a while you’re going to quit,” Long says.

On the seventh day at the detox facility, he was in so much pain that he took his belt, walked into his bedroom, and hung himself in his closet. The firm sued the referring place because they referred him to an unqualified facility. They also sued the detox facility because they didn’t know what they were doing.

The odds did not favor Long and his team. There have been 25 or so suicide or attempted suicide cases tried in California since 1986. Only six verdicts were in favor of the plaintiff. The trial took a month. The David vs. Goliath case pitted Long against a team of five experienced attorneys.

The largest verdict at the time for similar cases in California was around $9 million. This verdict came in at $11 million. The jury gets to assign liability—divide up the pie. The jury only found John 15 percent responsible for hanging himself, which means that 85 percent came from what these people did by torturing this man.

That case is just one example from his record of success at trial. He routinely gets jury verdicts in excess of the defendant’s insurance policy limits. One example is where the insurance company would not pay the $100,000 policy limits and he received a jury verdict of $3,000,000 (all non-economic damages). In another example, Long turned down a combined $450,000 offer from two defendants that had $1,000,000 policies and Long received an 8-figure jury verdict. In another example, the insurance company would only pay $30,000 against a $100,000 policy and the jury verdict was $660,000. In another example, the defendants offered $205,000 against a $500,000 policy and the jury verdict was $1.1million.

Long says, “I’m a competitive person. I believe in perseverance, aggressiveness, and when you don’t want to keep working you push yourself even harder because there’s an end game—getting justice for your client. When you win, it’s an incredible feeling well beyond the money you get for your client. It’s seeing and experiencing doing the right thing.”

Fighting the Insurance Companies

Long joined Bisnar Chase in April 2012 and has handled a surprisingly large number of auto accident cases in an equally short period of time. He has taken a number of those cases to a jury trial, winning an overwhelming majority of those cases.

Long says, “Clients and attorneys call me because I have a consistent track record of getting jury verdicts above the defendant’s insurance policy limits. So, when the lawyer/client is in a situation where the defendant’s insurance company will not pay the policy limits, they want me to try the case to get a verdict of above those insurance limits and collect, which I routinely do.”

Rather than being intimidated by the odds that are often against him and his firm, Long is aggressive in the process of fighting and winning against unscrupulous insurance companies—corporations that have absolutely no problems playing hardball with injured victims who are trying to get their lives back on track after a traumatic, life-altering event.

“When I expose these insurance companies and their tricks, I just love that. I love taking the insurance companies down. People diligently pay their premiums to insurance companies thinking that they’ll get compensated during a time of need. But, instead, they find out after an accident that they have to jump through hoops. And after all that, they may not get anything,” he says.

He informs mistreated clients that it is wrong to assume that the insurance company is a friend and that the representatives and the company often just don’t care. When someone is harmed and makes a claim, they are not considered a person, but are just a file. Regardless of the damage to the physical body, the family or the future well-being of the individual, he or she is in their minds just paperwork.

After one of his trials a juror said in an interview, “Gavin Long did a hell of a job in presenting the plaintiff’s case. He was ‘Johnny on the spot’ with all the questions. I was very impressed. If I was in need of something like that, I would want him to be my attorney.”

Long says, “It’s an honor be the one the client has chosen to take on Goliath. I take that seriously. That’s what motivates me—showing them they were right trusting me.” He said his wife, Rebekah, Brian Chase and Joshua Karton are the individuals who have had the greatest impact on where he is today as a trial lawyer.

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