UNDER CONSTRUCTION

       BACK SOON!

Kim Higgins Townsend is a veteran New York City trial attorney, having taken over 200 jury verdicts, in addition to countless settlements, over the course of his lengthy career. He has been trying cases in the New York metropolitan region since his graduation from law school in 1979 when he was hired as an Assistant District Attorney by Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan District Attorney. Those were difficult years for law enforcement in New York City. The jury reforms of the 1990s were a long way off and the financially strapped city simply couldn't afford the comprehensive approach to law and order which is taken for granted today. And as an ADA, you had to fight tooth and nail to get a conviction from jurors who overwhelmingly viewed the police with suspicion, if not outright hostility. All of which meant that young ADAs were given far more responsibility and trial opportunity than has been the case since the Giuliani war on crime years. Mr. Townsend took advantage of those opportunities and tried scores of cases before his departure in 1986. He knew, then, that trial practice would be the central focus of his career.

 

In 1986, Mr. Townsend joined the Suffolk County Attorney's Federal Torts Division where he acquired substantial Federal practice skills defending sec. 1983 Civil Rights claims against the Suffolk County Police Department, and individual officers, in U.S. District Court. Again, these were difficult matters, overwhelmingly tried in Brooklyn before juries who did not look favorably upon the police.  Mr. Townsend's record of success there was outstanding.

 

 In 1989, Mr. Townsend joined the Insurance Defense firm, Jones Hirsch Connors & Bull, as a senior trial attorney and, later, partner. There, he learned the insurance business and tried dozens of cases to verdict on behalf of insurance companies and their insureds in the New York State, New York City and U.S. District Courts of the New York City metropolitan area.

 

In 1997, Mr. Townsend joined Transamerica Insurance Group to try cases for their Nassau-Suffolk-Queens in-house firm, renamed Bell & Townsend upon his arrival. There he learned how the insurance business works from the inside.

 

In recent years, however, as personal injury litigation in the metropolitan area evolved, practical stress on plaintiff firms and insurance defense firms became virtually identical; they both needed competent, seasoned trial counsel without the overhead ordinarily associated with maintaining such persons on staff.

 

In 1998, Mr. Townsend formed the Law Office of Kim H. Townsend, dedicated to trying cases for other lawyers and law firms who were unable to handle the trial of matters they could not settle. For many years, the preponderance of those trials were conducted on behalf of plaintiff firms and their clients. 

 

In 2010, Mr. Townsend became Chief Trial Counsel to The Law Office of Steven G. Fauth, LLC, and since then has been handling predominantly insurance defense trial matters, trying scores of them for local insurance defense firms and, in particular, Steven G. Fauth.

 

!n 2018, Mr. Townsend joined the prominent Insurance Defense firm, Gallo Vitucci Klar as Partner and Trial Counsel.