David Hastings switched from defending insurance companies to suing them in 1981, then built a discount-fee model around that switch; more than four decades later, his daughter Kate Hastings Winterland practices personal injury law out of the same Chandler office.
AN AWESOME ATTORNEYS EDITORIAL PROFILE Independently researched from public records, court filings, news coverage, peer-review directories, and firm-published materials.
ATTORNEY ADVERTISING / IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER. This profile is informational and may constitute attorney advertising. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney–client relationship. Case results, recovery figures, ratings, and awards described below are reported by the firm or by third-party rating organizations and are attributed accordingly; they describe past matters and do not guarantee, warrant, or predict the outcome of any future case. Every case is unique and involves risk, including the risk of loss. Prospective clients should consult directly with a licensed attorney about their specific circumstances.
At a Glance
| FIRM | Hastings & Hastings, P.C. |
| FOUNDED | 1981, Phoenix area; founder David G. Hastings (per the firm) |
| LEADERSHIP | David G. Hastings, Founder & President · Kate Hastings Winterland, attorney · Sean P. Hennick and Anthony C. Campagnolo, Managing Attorneys |
| OFFICES | Corporate office in Chandler, AZ, with roughly ten additional Arizona office locations (per the firm’s current site) |
| PRACTICE FOCUS | Personal injury and wrongful death: car, truck, motorcycle, pedestrian, and bicycle accidents (per the firm) |
| SIGNATURE EDGE | The “Discount Accident Fee” — a below-standard contingency fee the firm says it pioneered decades before “no fee unless we win” became a universal industry claim |
| FEE MODEL | Discount Accident Fee, below the 33%–40% industry-standard range, plus a “No Fee Promise” if no settlement is reached (per the firm) |
| TRACK RECORD | “600+ real handwritten reviews and 500+ Five Star Google Reviews from VERIFIED clients,” per the firm’s current site; more than 90 years of combined attorney experience (per the firm) |
| RECOGNITION | Kate Hastings Winterland named to The National Trial Lawyers Top 40 Under 40 (Arizona) and a 2026 Elite Lawyer honoree (per those organizations) |
| CONTACT | (480) 706-1100 · hastingsandhastings.com |
Every long-running Phoenix-area personal injury law firm in this series has an origin story about fees, philosophy, or both. Hastings & Hastings built its entire identity around one of them: a discount on the standard contingency fee that founder David Hastings introduced decades ago and that the firm still leads with today. What makes this profile different from the others is not just the fee — it’s that the firm is now, verifiably, on its second generation, with founder David Hastings’ daughter Kate Hastings Winterland practicing personal injury law inside the same Chandler office where her parents built the firm.
Origin: A Defense Lawyer Who Switched Sides
David G. Hastings earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with an emphasis in accounting and economics, from the University of Arizona, and later graduated “With Distinction” from the University of Arizona law school, per his own firm biography. He was admitted to the State Bar of Arizona in 1979 and began his legal career at Gust Rosenfeld, described in his biography as the oldest law firm in Arizona, where he represented some of the largest insurance companies in the world. In 1981, per the firm, Hastings switched sides — leaving insurance-defense work to represent accident victims instead, and founding Hastings & Hastings the same year.
The fee structure that would define the firm followed soon after. Believing the industry-standard 33–40% contingency fee was too high, Hastings created what the firm calls the Discount Accident Fee — a lower, fixed percentage paired with a “No Fee Promise” that clients owe nothing if no settlement is reached. In 1993, per the firm, the Arizona Business Gazette profiled Hastings and dubbed him “The Discounting King” for the approach. More than three decades later, the firm’s own materials still describe the fee as the practice’s defining feature, distinguishing it from the results-first or technology-first pitches other firms in this series lead with.
Leadership: A Second Generation Joins the Firm
David Hastings continues to practice out of the firm’s Chandler corporate office today, per the firm, and remains active in the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law community: he sponsors an annual scholarship there and, per his biography, was the inaugural sponsor of a Bachelor of Laws undergraduate scholarship at the University of Arizona — a program the firm describes as the first of its kind in the country.
His daughter, Kate Hastings Winterland, joined the firm’s Chandler office as an attorney in December 2020 after being admitted to the State Bar of Arizona that year, according to a firm announcement carried by PR Newswire; she had worked at the firm in other capacities since 2007. Winterland’s path to the law was not linear: after earning a B.S. in Economics from Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business, she moved to New York to study Classic Culinary Arts at the French Culinary Institute and briefly worked in the city’s restaurant industry before returning to Arizona for law school, per her own professional biography. During law school she was certified as a mediator and worked in the Maricopa County Justice Courts mediating civil disputes. She has since been named to The National Trial Lawyers’ Top 40 Under 40 for Arizona and was selected as a 2026 Elite Lawyer honoree, per those organizations.
Two Managing Attorneys oversee specific regional offices. Sean P. Hennick holds a B.A. in Communications from the University of Arizona and a J.D. from the University of Miami School of Law, and practices out of the firm’s West Valley office, per his own attorney listings. Anthony C. Campagnolo, the firm’s West Valley managing attorney, graduated from Niagara University in western New York with a B.S. in Commerce in 2007, then worked as a manager in the rent-to-own industry before attending law school at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law; he was admitted to the State Bar of Arizona in 2014 after clerking in the Civil Division of the City of Tempe Attorney’s Office, per his own firm biography, and focuses his practice exclusively on personal injury law.
The Discount Fee: A Structural Differentiator, Not a Marketing Line
Where other firms in this series differentiate on trial record, technology, or founding lineage, Hastings & Hastings differentiates on price. The firm states plainly that the standard personal injury contingency fee in Arizona runs 33%–40%, rising further if a case proceeds to litigation, and that its Discount Accident Fee is structured to never rise to that level regardless of case complexity. Paired with the No Fee Promise — clients pay nothing if the case does not settle or win at trial — the pitch is explicitly about what a client keeps, not just what the firm recovers. Kate Hastings Winterland has described the fee philosophy in similar terms, per her own biography, framing attorneys who charge a full third or more of a settlement as failing to put the client’s interests first.
What Hastings & Hastings Handles
- Car accidents and Phoenix car accident claims (per the firm)
- Truck and semi-truck accidents (per the firm)
- Motorcycle, bicycle, and pedestrian accidents (per the firm)
- Wrongful death claims and catastrophic injury matters (per the firm)
- Dog bite claims — cited by the firm as one example of a case type the Discount Fee applies to
Track Record
Hastings & Hastings does not publish a broad itemized table of individual case results in the way some firms in this series do, though at least one specific, dollar-figure settlement has been publicized: per a January 2021 PR Newswire release, managing attorney Anthony Campagnolo secured a $1,750,000 settlement for a client, identified only as Ms. Sanchez, who suffered catastrophic injuries after being rear-ended by a commercial company vehicle in late 2019. The firm’s release states the settlement was reached without the need for litigation, after the driver of the company vehicle was found fully responsible. Beyond that example, the firm’s public materials emphasize aggregate figures over an itemized ledger: firm press releases from 2015 and 2016 reported cumulative client savings of roughly $11 million and $14 million respectively under the Discount Fee over the preceding several years — figures now roughly a decade old, cited here for historical context rather than as a current total. The firm’s current site states it has “more than 90 years of combined legal experience” among its attorneys and reports “600+ real handwritten reviews and 500+ Five Star Google Reviews from VERIFIED” clients.
Past-Results Disclaimer. Every case is different, and results depend on each matter’s specific facts and circumstances. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any other matter. Figures above are reported by the firm on its own published materials and have not been independently audited by Awesome Attorneys; amounts may reflect gross recoveries before fees, costs, and liens.
In Their Clients’ Words
The firm’s own marketing emphasizes review volume over individually featured quotes, reporting hundreds of handwritten and five-star Google reviews from verified clients, per the firm. Third-party review platforms tell a more mixed story than the firm’s own curated materials: Yelp reviews for the Chandler office include clients praising specific attorneys by name — “Sean Hennick is a wonderful lawyer and will fight for what u deserve to get,” one reviewer wrote — alongside at least one detailed negative account from a reviewer who felt communication was inconsistent and that their settlement, after a two-year process, was lower than expected. Awesome Attorneys is not in a position to adjudicate between these accounts; both are presented because an editorial profile that cited only the positive reviews while a documented negative account exists would not be a complete picture.
Beyond the Courtroom
David Hastings and his family are described by the firm as active supporters of Special Olympics Arizona, the Phoenix Children’s Hospital Down Syndrome Clinic, the Down Syndrome Network of Arizona, the Salvation Army, and St. Vincent De Paul, among other charitable causes, per his firm biography. His ongoing scholarship sponsorships at the University of Arizona’s law school — including what the firm describes as the first Bachelor of Laws undergraduate scholarship program of its kind in the country — extend that involvement into legal education specifically.
Recognition
- Kate Hastings Winterland: The National Trial Lawyers Top 40 Under 40, Arizona (per The National Trial Lawyers)
- Kate Hastings Winterland: 2026 Elite Lawyer honoree (per Elite Lawyer)
- David G. Hastings: profiled as “The Discounting King” by the Arizona Business Gazette, 1993 (per the firm)
The Arizona Legal Backdrop
What follows is general legal information about Arizona law, not legal advice. Arizona’s statute of limitations for personal injury and wrongful death claims is generally two years from the date of injury (A.R.S. § 12-542); miss it, and even a strong claim is typically barred. For claimants under 18 at the time of injury, or found to be of unsound mind, the clock does not begin running until the disability ends (A.R.S. § 12-502) — a rule the firm’s own materials specifically flag to prospective clients.
Arizona is a pure comparative negligence state (A.R.S. § 12-2505): an injured person who was partly at fault can still recover damages, reduced by their own percentage of fault, with no cutoff at fifty percent as in many other states. Dog-bite claims carry their own strict-liability statute (A.R.S. § 11-1025), holding owners responsible regardless of the animal’s prior history, though Arizona courts apply a shorter, one-year limitations period to that specific statutory claim. Claims against a government entity — a city, county, or state agency — require a formal notice of claim within 180 days (A.R.S. § 12-821.01) and suit within one year (A.R.S. § 12-821), both far shorter than the standard two-year window.
This section is general legal information about Arizona statutes, not legal advice, and may not reflect changes after July 2026. Anyone with a potential injury claim should consult a licensed Arizona attorney promptly given how these deadlines vary by claim type and defendant.
The Awesome Attorneys Assessment
Hastings & Hastings built its identity on a single, durable idea — charge less than the industry standard, and say so loudly — and has now carried that idea into a second generation without changing it. That consistency is the firm’s real asset: more than four decades after David Hastings switched from defending insurers to suing them, the fee philosophy he built the firm around is the same one his daughter now describes to her own clients, and its regional managing attorneys, Hennick and Campagnolo, each came to the firm by a specific, documented path rather than an unnamed associate pool. The trade-off is that Hastings & Hastings’ public materials still lean heavily on aggregate figures — review counts, years of combined experience, historical savings totals — rather than a full itemized ledger, and this profile found third-party reviews more mixed than the firm’s own curated testimonials suggest. A prospective client evaluating trial record specifically may want to ask the firm directly for recent case outcomes beyond the one publicized settlement described above. For someone whose primary concern is what percentage of a settlement they’ll actually keep, Hastings & Hastings’ pitch is unusually direct.
Methodology & Sourcing
This profile was researched from Hastings & Hastings’ own website (hastingsandhastings.com), David G. Hastings’ and Kate Hastings Winterland’s published attorney biographies, PR Newswire and Newswire.com press releases issued by the firm between 2015 and 2020, and third-party profiles from Justia, The National Trial Lawyers, and Elite Lawyer. Facts are attributed to the firm or the cited third party throughout and were not independently re-verified against court or bar records beyond the public listings cited. Readers should confirm current fee terms, office count, and recognition status directly with the firm before relying on them.
Publisher Disclosure & Independence Notice
This profile is an independent editorial article published by Awesome Attorneys. Awesome Attorneys does not endorse, recommend, or warrant any lawyer or law firm profiled on this site, and inclusion in this series is not paid placement. “Awesome Attorneys” is a brand name only; it is not a rating, ranking, or claim that any profiled firm is superior in any legal category.
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Facts, figures, and claims in this profile were independently researched from public sources as described in the Methodology & Sourcing section and are current only as of the research date; they are subject to change without notice, and readers should confirm any detail directly with the firm before relying on it. This notice supplements, and does not replace, the Attorney Advertising notice at the top of this profile.