Buscemi Hallett LLP

Focus and practice areas

Working out of San Diego, Buscemi Hallett LLP covers two fields that often meet in one dispute: construction law and insurance claims. Both involve contracts that promise payment or repair, and both turn on what the paperwork actually says. The firm represents individuals, businesses, and institutional clients. Litigation runs through the work, since many of these matters reach a courtroom or the edge of one.

The construction disputes it handles

On the construction side, the firm names a specific set of tools: mechanic's liens, stop payment notices, bond claims, delay claims, breach of contract actions, SB800 matters, and construction defect claims. It works for both property owners and builders, so it sees a payment fight from either chair. That mix matters in construction, where a single delay can read as one party's fault or the other's depending on the record.

A mechanic's lien gives a contractor or supplier a claim against the property itself when a bill goes unpaid, and California sets tight deadlines for recording one. Stop payment notices and bond claims offer similar security on private and public jobs. SB800, the state's Right to Repair Act, sets the standards and the steps for residential construction defect claims, and it requires notice to the builder before a suit. Sorting out which of these fits a given job is much of the early work in a construction case.

Delay claims and breach of contract actions often travel together, since a schedule that slips can trigger both a demand for extra cost and a fight over who caused it. Bond claims matter on projects where a surety backs the contractor, and they follow their own notice rules. Because the firm takes work from owners and from builders, it reads these claims from two angles, which can shape how it frames a case for a given client.

Insurance and coverage work

The insurance practice centers on claims that an insurer has denied, delayed, or underpaid, along with coverage disputes and bad faith. As a reviewer, I read this as the policyholder's side of the table, since those are the complaints that customers bring against an insurer. The firm handles personal and business policies, so a homeowner and a company can both find relevant footing here.

The policy types the firm lists are unusually specific. They include commercial general liability, commercial property and business interruption, directors and officers, errors and omissions, homeowners, automobile, flood and water damage, life, and disability coverage. California bad faith law lets a policyholder pursue an insurer that unreasonably withholds benefits, and the named policy types show where the firm expects those questions to arise. A denied disability or life claim, for one, follows a different path than a business interruption dispute after a flood.

Bad faith is a separate layer on top of a coverage dispute. A policyholder first shows that a claim should have been paid, then shows that the insurer's handling of it was unreasonable. The commercial policies the firm names, including directors and officers and errors and omissions coverage, tend to involve larger dollar figures and closer reading of exclusions. The personal lines, such as homeowners and automobile, more often turn on cause of loss and the scope of what the policy covers.

How the team is built

The firm names four attorneys: Michael Buscemi, David Hallett, Jonathan Bobak, and Brandon Rodriguez. Two of those names sit in the firm's own title, which points to Buscemi and Hallett as the named partners, though the site does not state titles for any individual. The firm reports more than 50 years of combined legal experience across the group. In my opinion, a four-lawyer firm with that much shared time tends to keep the same people on a file for the life of a case, which clients in a long construction or coverage fight usually value.

The site gives the combined experience figure without breaking it down by attorney, so the depth reads as a group total. For a client, the practical read is a bench of four names who cover both sides of the firm's work, construction and insurance, from the same office.

Where the firm works

The office sits in San Diego, and the firm says it represents clients throughout Southern California and across the United States. The site also lists Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Modesto, Fresno, and San Jose among the places it serves, which reaches well up the state into Central and Northern California. Insurance and construction disputes often follow the location of the property or the policy, which can sit far from a client's home city, so a wider service map fits the kind of work described.

Getting started with the firm

Buscemi Hallett LLP offers a free initial consultation, which gives someone with a denied claim or a stalled construction payment a chance to test the matter early. A first meeting in these areas usually covers the contract or policy, the timeline, and any filing deadlines already running. For construction claims, those deadlines can be short under California law, and a mechanic's lien in particular must be recorded within set periods after the work ends.