Lawyers of Distinction is proud to welcome Joel Castro, Esq., of Los Angeles, California. Joel Castro is the founding partner of Castro & Associates. Castro & Associates is one of the most prominent construction and failure analysis law firms in the country and has led the way in helping earthquake victims resolve damage and injury claims to put their lives back together. In December of 2017, the Castro team recovered $55 million for its clients to repair construction and seismic deficiencies, during litigation. It was reported as the largest construction recovery of the decade by the Los Angeles Daily Journal.
The Castro firm has practiced for over four decades, and is renowned for its comprehensive failure analysis and hands-on testing of damaged and collapsed building sites throughout California. Among the firm’s proudest accomplishments was trying cases with published results by the California Court of Appeals (Myrick v. Mastagni) that enabled the construction industry to adopt new safety measures for unreinforced masonry (URM) and soft story structures. Retrofitting these projects now will protect the public from catastrophic earthquake losses and will minimize downtime for the housing market.
In 2016, Joel Castro spoke at the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s [EERI] seminar “Using Legal Action to Improve Earthquake Safety.” He has also lectured about earthquake preparedness, performance-based engineering, and housing stock impact from damaged earthquake buildings. He received the first annual Justice Advocacy Award in 2012 for his litigation of the San Simeon Earthquake deaths, and was voted Outstanding Construction Attorney by his peers in the Los Angeles County Bar Association. He is frequently quoted as a seismic/legal resource by National Geographic, the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Daily Journal.
