Chris Hamilton is one of the country’s leading trial lawyers. He has won record-setting verdicts and settlements in catastrophic personal injury cases, wrongful death lawsuits, and complex business disputes.
Hamilton has won over $8 billion in verdicts and settlements for his clients in cases where he was lead counsel.
After starting his career at Legal Aid, Hamilton obtained his first multi-million-dollar jury verdict as lead counsel in his twenties. Since then, over the last two decades, he has won one record-setting verdict after another representing individuals against the most powerful corporations and insurance companies in the world, often in difficult or complex cases.
Lawdragon Honors
| Honor | Year | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| The 2026 Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers | 2026 | Personal Injury, Wrongful Death |
| The 2025 Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers | 2025 | Personal Injury, Wrongful Death |
| The 2024 Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers | 2024 | |
| The 2023 Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers | 2023 | Personal Injury, Wrongful Death |
| The 2022 Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers | 2022 | Personal Injury, Wrongful Death |
| The 2021 Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers | 2021 | Personal Injury, Wrongful Death |
| The 2020 Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers | 2020 | Personal Injury, Wrongful Death |
In 2022, Hamilton won a historic $7 billion jury verdict in a wrongful death case against a Fortune 100 company for negligence, gross negligence, and forgery, which was the year’s largest verdict nationwide and the 4th largest personal injury award in U.S. history against a corporation.
The Dallas Business Journal recognized Hamilton for winning Texas’ largest personal injury verdict in 2014, which ranked as the nation’s 17th largest. In addition, he was recognized by Top Verdict in 2016 for Texas’ 9th largest personal injury verdict. Verdict Search noted him in 2011 for one of the state’s Top 10 and Top 100 verdicts in the U.S. Hamilton has also been repeatedly recognized for having among the top personal injury settlements in Texas, year after year.
One of the secrets to Hamilton’s success is that he approaches every courtroom fight focused on what is in the best interest of his client. Hamilton has never backed down from a difficult or challenging case that he believed was a just and righteous cause. As one client said after a trial, “Hamilton had an emotional investment in the case. And it wasn’t an act.”
Hamilton has been featured in Courtroom View Network’s (CVN) list of the Most Impressive Trials of 2019, and his multibillion- dollar victory three years later topped CVN’s list of the Most Impressive Plaintiffs Verdicts of 2022.
Hamilton’s cases have been featured in numerous media outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, USA Today, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, Fox News, CNN, Business Insider, Texas Lawyer, Dallas Business Journal, Law360, The Dallas Morning News, The Texas Lawbook, The Houston Chronicle, and The Austin- American Statesman, and numerous local television reports and print news stories nationwide.
Hamilton has served as an adjunct professor of Trial Advocacy at SMU and has guest-lectured at law schools across Texas. He is deeply involved with training Hamilton Wingo’s trial lawyers. Hamilton has always taught that at Hamilton Wingo, we should represent every client the way we would represent our own family members, and everything else will take care of itself.
Hamilton earned the Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year honor in 2017 from the American Association for Justice for defending Constitutional rights. Chris is a fluent Spanish speaker.