Bill McAlister relies on his forty-seven years of experience in civil litigation to assist clients in complex litigation in both trial and appellate courts. Bill provides coverage opinions to property and casualty insurers and he has successfully obtained declaratory judgments for insurance companies, finding serious claims were not covered by liability policies.  He has also succeeded in establishing determinations for clients that their claims were covered by insurance.  In his appellate practice, Bill has handled many cases of first impression and on occasion succeeded in convincing the courts to overrule prior precedential decisions.   Bill has obtained favorable results for clients in appeals from administrative decisions.  Bill has more than twenty years’ experience as a neutral arbitrator, and has arbitrated more than one hundred disputes, both large and small.

  • Helped obtain a decision that a non-profit organization was exempt from unemployment taxes based on a statutory exemption.
  • Assisted in the successful defense of out of state lawyers in a legal malpractice case brought in Oklahoma by a third party who was not a client, by establishing that the lawyers’ client went out of state to obtain legal services and the law of the lawyers’ home state that did not permit suits against lawyers by non-clients applied.
  • Recently assisted in successfully seeking certiorari by the Oklahoma Supreme Court from a decision of the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals construing a uniform law that had been construed in different ways by courts in other states.  The Oklahoma Supreme Court then rendered a decision construing a uniform law in a manner favorable to the client and reversing the decisions of the lower courts.
  • Helped obtain a state court declaratory judgment for a liability insurer holding that a fraud claim for the sale of a mobile home was not covered under a garage liability policy.
  • Working for a commercial auto liability insurer, obtained a declaration that a special exclusion pertaining to non-owned vehicles validly precluded coverage for an insured contractor for a wrongful death occurring on a construction site.
  • Succeeded argued to have an indemnity claim against a drilling contractor arising from a North Dakota drilling rig fire dismissed from an Oklahoma State Court under the foreign non convenes doctrine.

  • Former Senior Law Clerk for The Honorable Fred Daugherty, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma and Judge of the Eastern and Northern Districts of Oklahoma
  • Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals, former Judge, assigned by the Oklahoma Supreme Court for a Temporary Division
  • Federal Court, Former Special Master
  • Oklahoma Bar Foundation, Sustaining Fellow
  • Oklahoma County Bar Association, Board of Directors, 1999-2002
  • Oklahoma Bar Association, Civil Procedure and Evidence Committee, Member, 1988-2013
  • Oklahoma Association of Defense Counsel, Member
  • Defense Research Institute, Member
  • United States Army, Helicopter Pilot, 1961-1964
  • United States Army Reserves, Master Army Aviator, 1964-1988