Justin J. Hawal

Justin Hawal has a broad range of experience representing clients nationwide in complex mass tort, class action, civil and human rights, and catastrophic injury litigation.

Justin has played a key role in several trials yielding millions of dollars in verdicts, including cases involving police misconduct, catastrophic injuries, and death due to governmental and corporate wrongdoing. He is heavily involved in multiple nationwide mass torts, including multidistrict litigation related to defective hair relaxers, preterm infant formula, and baby foods contaminated with toxic heavy metals. He has also been integrally involved in major nationwide class actions, representing consumers and governmental entities against corporate giants such as Equifax, Marriott, Netflix, Hulu, and Sonic Healthcare USA, among others.

Justin is an integral member of the DiCello Levitt team pursuing claims against some of the largest social media companies in the world for their alleged role in the 2022 Buffalo mass shooting in Buffalo, New York. He represents South Carolina’s Greenville Water system in ongoing litigation against U.S. Pipe and its distributors over defective ductile iron pipes installed in the public utility’s water system. And he is a key member of the team that filed the largest single international sex trafficking lawsuit in U.S. history, brought against former fashion mogul Peter Nygard, alleging a decades-long conspiracy involving rape, sexual assault, and human trafficking across the U.S., Canada, and the Bahamas.

Justin’s work also extends to appellate practice, where he has briefed and argued cases in appellate courts across the country, including intermediate appellate courts in Ohio, New York, and South Carolina, the Supreme Court of Ohio, the Supreme Court of Tennessee, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Eleventh Circuits. Most recently, Justin led the appeal in a federal civil rights case involving a fatal police shooting, in which the Sixth Circuit affirmed the denial of summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds, clearing the way for the family’s excessive force claims to proceed to trial.

Justin was recently named to Benchmark Litigation’s 40 & Under list, was one of only 40 attorneys nationwide to be named a 2021 Rising Star by The National Law Journal’s Elite Trial Lawyers, and has been named a Super Lawyers Rising Star annually since 2020. Justin was also awarded Public Justice’s 2021 Trial Lawyer of the Year for his work on the trial team in Black v. Hicks, a groundbreaking civil rights case involving shocking police misconduct and resulting in a $50 million jury award.