We have studied the Hall insulators (HIs) in a gated two-dimensional GaAs electron system containing self-assembled InAs quantum dots. It is shown that the semicircle law can become invalid in the quantum Hall (QH) liquid, so that the quantized Hall plateau is absent at the insulator-quantum Hall (I-QH) transition. The appearance and breakdown of the semicircle law in the insulating phase can both be observed when the QH liquid is destroyed by disorder. From our study, the quantized HI is not necessarily accompanied by the I-QH transition.