Justin Hawal’s practice spans product liability, mass torts, class actions, cybersecurity and data privacy, civil rights, human rights, and personal injury litigation. He received Public Justice’s Trial Lawyer of the Year award in 2021 for his role in Black v. Hicks, a landmark civil rights case involving egregious police misconduct that resulted in a $50 million jury award—one of the largest such verdicts in U.S. history. He also has been recognized by The National Law Journal as an Elite Trial Lawyers Rising Star.
Justin has played key roles in several personal injury trials yielding verdicts over $1 million, including cases involving catastrophic injuries caused by a reckless police officer and a fatal school bus crash. He is heavily involved in ongoing litigation against U.S. Pipe and its distributors over defective ductile iron pipes installed in South Carolina’s Greenville Water system. He is also active in multiple nationwide mass torts, including multidistrict litigation related to defective hair relaxers, preterm infant formulas, and baby foods contaminated with toxic heavy metals.
Justin is an integral member of the DiCello Levitt team pursuing claims against social media companies for their alleged role in the 2022 supermarket mass shooting in Buffalo, New York. He has also been integrally involved in major class actions, including one against Equifax for misreporting consumer credit data and others stemming from high-profile data breaches.
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. The case alleges a decades-long conspiracy involving rape, sexual assault, and trafficking across the U.S., Canada, and the Bahamas.
- Appellate
- Class action
- Plaintiff
- Product liability and recall
- J.D., cum laude - Cleveland Marshall College of Law - 2014
- B.A., cum laude - Saint Louis University - 2010
- American Association for Justice - 2015
- Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association - 2014
- Ohio Association for Justice - 2015
- Ohio State Bar Association - 2014
- Ohio - 2014