About Joseph Cook
Joseph P. Cook grew up on his family's ranch east of Billings, where he learned the value of hard work. He earned a basketball scholarship to Rocky Mountain College, where he obtained his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Economics in 2005. He then earned his J.D. from the University of Montana School of Law in 2009, where he served as President of the Rural Advocacy League, was selected as Co-lead Counsel on the American Association of Justice Trial Team, and received the International Academy of Trial Lawyers Student Advocacy Award.
Joe began his legal career clerking for the United States District Court in Great Falls, then returned to Billings where he has represented individuals and Montana businesses ever since. His work has produced record-setting multi-million dollar verdicts in medical malpractice and auto collision cases, and he was recognized by his peers as the 2020 Montana Trial Lawyer of the Year, one of the youngest attorneys ever to receive that honor. He is an Eagle Member of the Montana Trial Lawyers Association and a member of the American Association of Justice.
Proven verdicts and settlements at Heenan & Cook Injury and Accident Attorneys
These results are credited to Heenan & Cook Injury and Accident Attorneys. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
At CoreCivic's Crossroads Correctional Center in Shelby, Montana, an inmate serving a double life sentence let himself out of his own locked pod and into Nathaniel Lake's, then beat and choked him for more than three and a half minutes with no staff intervention. Lake was in a coma for 33 days and has a permanent brain injury.
A federal jury awarded $15 million to two families whose loved ones died at Canyon Creek Memory Care during a 2020 COVID-19 outbreak, finding the Billings facility and its parent company Koelsch Senior Communities liable for neglect through chronic understaffing.
Heenan and Cook secured a $9 million settlement from Custer County District High School on behalf of 32 former student athletes who were sexually abused over decades by longtime school athletic trainer James 'Doc' Jensen.
In 2015 a woman on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation called authorities because she was worried someone might be drinking and driving. The Bureau of Indian Affairs officer who responded assaulted her. A federal judge fixed damages at $1.6 million in 2020, and after nearly a decade of litigation over whether the United States was responsible, ordered it to pay in 2025.
A federal jury found that a North Dakota debt-collection law firm violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by filing and pursuing a credit card lawsuit it knew was barred by Montana's statute of limitations, awarding Timothy McCollough $311,000 in statutory, emotional distress, and punitive damages.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
