Timothy Scott Trecek

Tim Trecek is the Vice President, Chief Operations Officer and Corporate Secretary of Habush Habush & Rottier and has been a member of the law firm since 1995. He is a managing partner of both the Milwaukee and West Bend offices. Tim specializes in all types of personal injury litigation. He has successfully litigated cases involving automobile defects (airbags, seatbelts, seats, and structural integrity), construction accidents, misfiled prescriptions, car/motorcycle accidents, truck/semi accidents, slip/trip and falls, dog bites, injuries involving horses, brain injuries, RSD (reflex sympathetic dystrophy), machine defects (saws, chippers, cement mixer defects, deer stands, snow blowers), child car seats, personal watercraft, and specialized experience with serious burn injuries from events such as explosions and utility/electrical accidents.

In 2020, Tim and his team obtained the largest single plaintiff verdict in the history of the State of Wisconsin, when a Racine County jury awarded his client $38.16 million, for injuries caused by a defectively designed driver’s seat in his 2013 Hyundai Elantra. Also in 2020, the Wisconsin Association for Justice selected Tim as the recipient of the Robert L. Habush Trial Lawyer of the Year, making Tim only one of two attorneys in the state, to be honored with the award twice (read acceptance speech).

Tim has worked on cases throughout the United States. Due to his significant trial experience, he has been certified as a Civil Trial Specialist by the National Board of Trial Advocacy and has been selected for exclusive membership in the American Board of Trial Advocates. He was recognized in the January 25, 2006 issue of the Wisconsin Law Journal (see article) for holding three of the state’s top five settlements in 2005. In 2009, he obtained the third largest reported award in the State of Wisconsin ($6 million) for his client who was injured in an accident with a semi-trailer truck.

In February of 2011, Tim obtained a $16 million award on behalf of eight injured scaffold workers involved in a dust explosion at the WE Energies Oak Creek plant. This is the largest award in the State’s history involving injuries caused by an explosion of PRB (Powder River Basin) coal dust. It also makes Tim the only attorney in Wisconsin to have four multi-million dollar recoveries against the State’s largest utility.

In 2011, the Wisconsin Association for Justice selected Tim (for the first time) as the recipient of the prestigious Robert L. Habush, Wisconsin Trial Lawyer of the Year Award (read acceptance speech). Additionally, he was named as one of Wisconsin’s Leaders in the Law in 2008 by the Wisconsin Law Journal. In 2013 Tim was accepted as a Fellow in the prestigious American College of Trial Attorneys, one of the youngest recipients of this venerable honor. In 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2021, he was honored to be listed as Lawyer of Year for Product Liability Litigation and in 2022 was honored as Lawyer of the Year for both Product Liability Litigation and Personal Injury Litigation in Milwaukee by Best Lawyers in America. He has been listed in Best Lawyers in America since 2010. Tim was requested by the Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court to serve two terms on the District 2 Committee of the Office of Lawyer Regulation, a body whose job it is to maintain the highest standards of ethics and professionalism in Wisconsin’s lawyers.

Since 2005, Tim has been teaching an Advanced Trial Practice course at Marquette University Law School. He has given speeches to other lawyers on a variety of legal topics. Using his experience in child car seat defect cases, he has given presentations to parents of preschool children concerning the safe use of child car seats. He is also a Fellow in the International Society of Barristers (and serves on its Board of Directors), is a member of the invitation-only Litigation Counsel of America, and is a member of the highly exclusive, invitation only, Summit Council, made up of the countries best plaintiff’s attorneys. Additionally, Tim has been recognized on the Wisconsin Super Lawyers list since 2006, making the Wisconsin Top 10 list many times since 2006. Tim was elected to the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee’s Board of Directors. The Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee is one of the nation’s oldest, continuously operating, public interest law firms.

Although he was born, raised, and works in southeastern Wisconsin, Tim has earned a national reputation as a successful plaintiff’s trial lawyer. Tim’s successes have been so noteworthy that they have been chronicled in papers such as the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the Fort Worth Star Telegram, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle and dozens of other publications. Tim is also actively involved in his church and the community.