Allen, Owen

Robert Allard
2012 California Lawyer of the Year in the field of Public Justice
"For helping children and their families recover from the evils of sex abuse"

Robert Allard is fully committed to using the law as a positive means of obtaining justice for his clients, protecting children from child abuse, and creating a safer community for all. 

In representing victims of the USA Swimming coaching molestation scandal, Allard's advocacy led to the announcement by the United States Olympic Committee that it was centralizing and standardizing background checks across all Olympic sports, thereby affecting the safety of approximately one million athletes.

In securing a multi-million dollar settlement in an amusement park accident that injured five children of a Calaveras County family, Allard forced the ride manufacturer to recall the carnival ride which collapsed while full of child passengers. "Obtaining justice against corporate wrongdoers is not always easy," said Allard. "In this case, the ride designer tried to cover up knowledge which if acted upon would have prevented this tragedy" added Allard.

For his devotion to the law, Allard has been named 2012 California Lawyer of the Year for Public Justice and twice the Santa Clara County Trial Lawyer of the Year (2007, 2009). Allard has perennially been named as one of California's Top 100 Trial Lawyers by the National Trial Lawyers Association (2010-present) and Super Lawyers (2008- present).
Also, Allard has received an "AV rating," the very highest accolade for legal ability and ethical standards under the peer review system of Martindale-Hubbell, the national legal directory. A California Assembly Resolution authored in 2007 by State Assembly Speaker Pro Tempore Sally J. Lieber states that Allard "represents the finest qualities of a trial lawyer and the legal profession and has made a lasting impression on those individuals with whom he has been associated".

As a loving father to four children and as someone who has seen the pain suffered by victims and their families of childhood molestation, Allard is working with California state legislators to enact tougher mandatory child molestation laws aimed at both predators and those that enable their crimes.

Allard has been practicing law in Santa Clara County since January of 1994. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1991, with a Bachelor of Arts degree. In 1994, Mr. Allard obtained his Juris Doctorate degree from the University of San Francisco. He has served as President for the Santa Clara County Trial Lawyers Association (2006) and, prior to that, served on its Board of Governors (2001-2005).

Allard has been featured on ABC Television's" 20/20" program and USA Today for his role in uncovering the largest sexual abuse scandal in US amateur athletics. In two child molestation cases alone against USA Swimming, Allard successfully battled 18 individual lawyers from 8 different law firms as USA Swimming spent an estimated four million dollars in legal fees in an effort to harass and intimidate his molestation victim clients.

In successfully representing hundreds of clients, Allard has earned a reputation for taking tough cases where insurance companies offer little or no money to an injured victim and for providing aggressive representation which generates fair compensation. In 2011, Allard won three jury trials against insurance carriers who tried to evade responsibility for their client's negligence.

In a case that demonstrates the callous disregard that insurance companies can have towards an injured victim, Allard secured a multi-million dollar arbitration award for a public school behavioral specialist who was seriously injured in a head-on car crash while traveling on a school field trip. Despite a clear case of liability, horrific injuries and hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills and lost wages, the school district's insurance relief fund never offered a penny in settlement and resorted to fighting the victim every step of the way.
(Egbert vs. Nor Cal Relief).