Attorney Profiles

Mr. Stuart has practiced law since 1980, specializing in insurance coverage and bad faith litigation. While he has handled every manner of insurance dispute, his principal focus is commercial insurance litigation involving business, real estate, construction and professional liability matters. His practice involves the representation of insurers and insureds in state and federal courts at both the trial and appellate levels. He also serves as a mediator in complex insurance actions. Mr. Stuart is an original author of California Liability Insurance Practice: Claims and Litigation published by CEB, and is recognized for his insurance expertise in Best Lawyers in America .

Mr. Stuart was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1955. He moved to Santa Barbara, California in 1964, where he developed a keen interest in the law during his high school years. The Channel Oil Spill of 1969, anti-war demonstrations at UCSB in 1970 and 1971, and the Watergate hearings of 1973 enticed Mr. Stuart to matriculate at the University of California, Berkeley, where he majored in Rhetoric and served as a staff writer for The Daily Californian . Mr. Stuart received his AB from Cal in 1977, and his Juris Doctor from Santa Clara University in 1980.

Upon graduating from law school, Mr. Stuart became an associate in the San Jose office of Hoge, Fenton, Jones & Appel, where he developed, with his current partners Randall Willoughby and Bradley Bening, one of the first specialty insurance coverage and bad faith practices in Northern California. In addition to building the firm's specialty practice, Mr. Stuart handled a variety of casualty defense cases, including personal injury, products liability and construction defect matters. Mr. Stuart became a shareholder in 1987 and was elected to the firm's management committee three years later.

In 1991, Mr. Stuart left Hoge, Fenton, Jones & Appel with two of his closest friends to form Willoughby, Stuart & Bening. From the day the new firm opened its doors, Mr. Stuart has devoted his practice to the delivery of creative, cost-effective, legal solutions to complex insurance problems. In a variety of cases, Mr. Stuart has used summary adjudication and motion in limine procedures to test legal theories in advance of trial, saving clients significant legal expenses. While he has tried both insurance coverage and bad faith cases to verdict, his focus is to use pretrial procedures and mediation as a method for resolving all litigation disputes.

Like his partner Bradley Bening, Mr. Stuart spent a portion of his youth acting in musicals, which led him to an appointment with the San Jose Arts Commission in 1987. Mr. Stuart served on the commission for five years, following which he was appointed to chair the San Jose Urban Design Review Board, providing a layperson's perspective on architectural design for the San Jose Redevelopment Agency. While chairing the UDRB, Mr. Stuart also was appointed to the San Jose Elections Commission, which oversaw compliance with ethics ordinances by candidates for Mayor and City Council. Mr. Stuart served on the commission for nine years, six as chair, after which he was retained on several occasions to provide advice to the City of San Jose on matters of election law and ethics. He currently serves as a board member on the San Jose Downtown Foundation and the Leland Foundation for Excellence in Education.

Mr. Stuart has been married to his wife Beverly since 1980, and has two children, Allison and Scott. A former water polo player, he had the privilege to coach both of his children in soccer from 1993 to 2002, when Allison left home for college and Scott decided to pursue water polo himself. Mr. Stuart is an avid skier and fly fisherman, enjoys tennis and mountain biking, and occasionally manages a respectable round of golf. He has many interests, including still and video photography, and has been known to work late into the night editing music videos of skiing adventures. He is a San Jose Sharks fan and looks forward every year to the playoffs, when the real hockey season begins.