Robert M. Tessier

Robert M. Tessier joins Signature Resolution as one of California’s most experienced tort mediators, having guided over 5,000 litigated disputes to resolution since 1994. Over the years, he built one of the most established personal injury mediation practices and became one of California’s go-to neutrals for catastrophic injury and complex tort matters.

Bob’s guiding belief is a simple one: most disputes don’t fail because the underlying facts are unresolvable; they fail because the people involved have stopped talking to each other. He has written extensively on this idea throughout his career. He is known for a firm but delicate touch, moving as needed between quiet listening and direct pressure, always insisting that every party gets genuine space to be heard before any negotiation over numbers begins. That patience tends to pay off: parties who arrive convinced the other side has stopped listening often leave surprised that resolution was there all along.

His early career took him through six firms over roughly a decade, litigating cases for injured plaintiffs in some matters and for corporate defendants in others, before he opened his own practice as Robert M. Tessier, P.C. after partnering at Rowell & Tessier. Having stood on both sides of disputes left him with a working fluency in catastrophic injury cases, traumatic brain and orthopedic trauma chief among them, along with the workers’ compensation offsets, medical liens, and insurance coverage questions that so often travel alongside them. That same grounding carries into his longstanding practice of mediating construction, real estate, and business disputes.

Bob’s standing in the field reflects that track record. He is a Distinguished Fellow and Board Member of the International Academy of Mediators, has been named a Super Lawyer every year since 2014, and has been recognized among the Los Angeles Daily Journal’s Top 50 Neutrals for the State of California. He holds an AV rating for professionalism and integrity, has published widely on mediation strategy in outlets including Plaintiff Magazine, the CAOC Advocate, and the Pepperdine Law Review, and has lectured on mediation practice to audiences as far afield as Reykjavik and Auckland. He is also an invited instructor at the Straus Institute on the subject of mediating the litigated case.

Outside the mediation room, Bob is a lifelong Southern California resident who still plays music in bands and restores classic automobiles. These are interests that give him genuine, firsthand fluency in the entertainment, IP, and product-related disputes where that kind of knowledge quietly matters. He also remains active in the legal community’s charitable work. At Signature Resolution, that same range makes Bob’s read on a case invaluable and consistently moves his mediations toward lasting resolution.