J. Patrick Jacobs

Special Counsel

• jpjacobs@steptoe.com
• vCard
• Century City Office

J. Patrick Jacobs is Special Counsel in the Century City office of Steptoe & Johnson LLP, where he is a member of the Insurance and Litigation Departments.

Mr. Jacobs has obtained successful verdicts and awards in multiple jury trials and binding arbitration proceedings. He has successfully prosecuted declaratory relief actions on insurance coverage questions in which potential exposure to the carrier was in the millions, as well as extensive appellate work. Mr. Jacobs also has extensive “first chair” trial experience in other practice areas.  (See Mr. Jacobs’ General Biography for a list of other representative verdicts and cases.)

Representative Insurance Related Matters and Clients

• Represented State Farm, Allstate, Lawyers Mutual, Hanover, and St. Paul Fire & Marine Company insureds as lead trial counsel in multiple jury trials over the course of three decades. Mr. Jacobs has achieved defense verdicts in many multi-million dollar exposure cases, and has a track record of achieving highly successful binding arbitration awards in favor of his insurance clients. Among his most notable defense verdicts was a catastrophic injury case Mr. Jacobs tried against Girardi & Keese, one of the preeminent plaintiffs’ trial firms in the country, in which his client was the target defendant. Mr. Jacobs developed evidence that shifted liability to the County of Los Angeles.
• Mr. Jacobs’ most recent successful jury verdict in a high stakes claim came in an indemnity case. Mr. Jacobs had an engineering expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology conduct a statistical probability analysis of the circumstances giving rise to the claim, and obtained a jury verdict in which all of the settlement monies paid by State Farm in settlement of the claim of a severely, permanently injured 20-year old plaintiff were recovered.
• Mr. Jacobs successfully represented Fremont Indemnity in a declaratory relief insurance coverage action involving accountants’ “claims made” E & O coverage. The underlying claims were made by clients of an accounting firm who took tax credits, deductions, and depreciation amounting to millions of dollars in tax liability when the Internal Revenue Service disallowed the credits, deductions, and depreciation. The case was tried before the Hon. Richard P. Byrne in Los Angeles County and resulted in a favorable judgment for the carrier, who was not required to pay a single claim.
• Mr. Jacobs has provided coverage opinions to a number of clients on complex insurance coverage matters.
• Mr. Jacobs recently was a member of a Steptoe & Johnson LLP trial team in a nine figure CERCLA case in which a favorable liability verdict was rendered for the insurance carrier client against the United States in Federal District Court before the Hon. Howard Matz.
   

Noteworthy

• Listed in Southern California Super Lawyers 2007 - 2011 for Civil Litigation Defense

Select News & Events

• Southern California Super Lawyers Honors 14 Steptoe Attorneys
• Prominent Litigators Join Steptoe's Century City Office

Professional Affiliations

• Association of Business Trial Lawyers (ABTL)
• American Bar Association, Litigation Section