About John Kawai
John Kawai is a trial lawyer who represents injury victims and their families in lawsuits against insurance companies and other transnational corporations, governments, and other persons and entities with disproportionately vast resources.
Since 2016, John has been a key member of Nick Rowley and Courtney Rowley’s trial team, contributing to landmark verdicts and settlements across the country.
John is equally proud of cases that advanced the law, including a record settlement for the family of a student who died by suicide after school bullying. He played a vital role in supporting the Fairness for Injured Patients Act, which led to California’s first reform of medical malpractice caps since 1975. John has also taken pro bono medical malpractice cases to raise public awareness of patient rights.
His areas of practice include medical malpractice, dangerous premises, fires, drownings, assaults, defective products, motor vehicle collisions, dangerous public property, and dog attacks. He represents victims suffering from catastrophic injuries, including death, paralysis, traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries, amputations, chronic pain, disfigurement, and severe emotional trauma. John is also one of the few attorneys in the nation handling federal civil restitution cases for victims of child sexual abuse imagery.
John is licensed to practice law in California, Washington, Nevada, Hawaii, and Oregon, as well as in several federal courts.
Inspired by his mother, a physician living with a disability, John’s passion for personal injury law began early. In high school, he volunteered in hospital brain and spinal cord injury wards. He earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from UC Berkeley and his Juris Doctor from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, where he joined the St. Thomas More Law Honor Society. Before focusing on personal injury, John clerked with prosecutors and worked pro bono to obtain reparations for Holocaust survivors. He is a graduate of Gerry Spence’s Trial Lawyers College in Dubois, Wyoming, and teaches with the Rowleys’ Trial by Human program.
Proven verdicts and settlements at Trial Lawyers for Justice
These results are credited to Trial Lawyers for Justice. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
Carrie DeJongh, 40, of Hull, Iowa, died on June 9, 2015 after receiving iodinated contrast dye for a CT scan at Sioux Center Health, when the physician treating her gave her an antihistamine but did not immediately check her vital signs or give epinephrine. Her family sued Sioux Center Health and Dr. Roy T. Slice for negligence, and both defendants denied the allegations. A Sioux County jury in Orange City returned a $29.5 million verdict on June 13, 2018, covering DeJongh's pain and suffering before her death and loss of consortium for her husband and four children. No appeal, remittitur or reduction has turned up since.
In February 2017, a physician assistant at a UnityPoint urgent care clinic in Des Moines diagnosed Joseph Dudley with the flu despite a negative flu test, sent him home on Tamiflu, and never ordered a complete blood count. Two days later Dudley was hospitalized with bacterial meningitis caused by an undetected heart valve infection, spent eight days in a medically induced coma, and suffered a series of strokes that left him with permanent brain damage, hearing loss, vertigo and nerve damage. A Polk County jury tried the malpractice claim against physician assistant Melanie Choos and Central Iowa Hospital Corp, doing business as UnityPoint Clinic, over a week in November 2022 and returned a $27,000,000 verdict, all of it noneconomic damages. The defense moved for a new trial afterward and UnityPoint said it was weighing an appeal.
Richard J. Pellock, 80, had surgery to remove bladder cancer at UnityPoint Health Finley Hospital in Dubuque, Iowa in January 2015, and the operation succeeded. Days later he needed a second procedure for a post-surgical complication, and the nurse anesthetist handling that procedure induced anesthesia without first emptying his stomach despite signs he had a full one. Pellock aspirated, developed aspiration pneumonia and respiratory failure, and died. His widow and son sued the anesthesia group and a Dubuque County jury returned a $10 million verdict against it in September 2017, awarded entirely as loss-of-consortium damages. Defense lawyers were reported as saying they would challenge the verdict, but no Iowa appellate decision in the case has ever been published.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
