Sheila McDonald is a partner at Walsworth, where she focuses her practice on insurance bad faith defense and general liability matters. She has a wide range of experience defending insurance carriers in both first-party and third-party bad faith actions. She has also represented carriers in subrogation and contribution matters and counseled clients on complex coverage issues.
Throughout her career, Sheila has managed a substantial case load from inception through mediation and trial. Sheila is a skilled litigator with more than 15 years of experience representing clients at mediation, arbitration, trial, and in appellate practice. Sheila also has substantial experience in professional liability litigation, including defending architects, engineers, construction managers, insurance agents, and veterinarians. In addition, she has a wide array of experience litigating high-exposure actions, including personal injury, wrongful death, design defect, and business disputes.
- Prevailed on numerous motions for summary judgment and summary adjudication in which she established that the insurer had no duty to defend or indemnify.
- Successfully eliminated numerous claims for punitive damages by way of motions to strike and summary adjudication.
- Successfully represented a client in a two-week arbitration of a construction defect matter with claims exceeding $10 million.
- Prevailed at trial representing a franchisee in a business dispute with the franchisor.
- Won summary judgment on behalf of a national insurance company on grounds that there was no duty to indemnify a judgment creditor who had obtained a 7-figure judgment against the insured. In a related bankruptcy proceeding, successfully prevented the same judgment creditor from obtaining an assignment of the insured’s cause of action for breach of the duty to defend against the insurer.
- Secured writ relief from the court of appeal on behalf of an insurance group that had been ordered by the trial court to produce a proprietary computer system that calculated the replacement cost of insured properties.
- Eliminated plaintiff’s claims for negligence and punitive damages in a bad faith matter in which plaintiff had alleged that the insurance policy was wrongfully cancelled and that the subject property was deliberately underinsured.
- Obtained summary judgment on behalf of an engineer where the plaintiff claimed catastrophic personal injuries due to alleged defects in roadway design.