Overview
We offer deep experience across the range of industries, exposures, insurance products, and issues relevant to our sophisticated business clients. Before there is any loss, we help ensure that our clients have appropriate coverage. After a loss, we help manage the policyholder/insurer relationship to maximize potential recoveries. We sue, when necessary, to enforce our clients' rights.
While our experience spans many industries, we have represented numerous clients involved in financial institutions, financial services, health care technology, real estate, energy, manufacturing, food & beverage, education, construction and agribusiness.
We have advised clients and handled disputes concerning virtually all types of business insurance, including Directors & Officers, Errors & Omissions, Employment Practices and Fiduciary Liability insurance policies, Property/Business Interruption, Cyber, Pollution, Product Recall & Contamination, Commercial General Liability, Workers Compensation/Employers Liability, and Business Auto insurance policies and Financial Institutions, Crime and other sorts of commercial bonds.
Our attorneys have been honored by inclusion in the American College of Coverage Counsel, Best Lawyers in America, Super Lawyers, Super Lawyers Rising Stars, and Benchmark Litigation.
Offerings
We sue insurance companies that deny coverage. But we also add value in other ways:
- We try to resolve disputes before litigation is necessary, leveraging our knowledge and litigation experience and employing pre-litigation mediation, when appropriate
- When businesses are sued or suffer man-made or natural disasters leading to insured losses, we facilitate insurance recoveries by
- Advising the client
- Developing and preserving supporting evidence
- Assisting in finding and managing other professionals
- Ensuring that defense counsel are cognizant of the client’s insurance and other business interests
- Communicating, advocating and negotiating with the insurers for coverage and prompt payment
- We work with brokers to tailor programs and address issues on renewal that respond to our clients' risks and concerns, including drafting manuscript policies and endorsements
- We assess needs and draft insurance provisions in contracts, including for M&A transactions, loans, leases, development agreements, and construction, supplier and vendor contracts
Experience
- Coverage counsel to unsecured creditors' committees in multiple bankruptcy proceedings arising from hundreds of sexual abuse claims implicating 50+ years of coverage under CGL, umbrella, excess and other policies; representation includes helping secure approximately $170,000,000 to fund plan of reorganization of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis
- Successful prosecution and resolution of lawsuit against property insurers that denied coverage for claim by a refinery suffering in excess of $100 million in losses relating to a catastrophic flood
- Successful prosecution and resolution of lawsuit against property insurers that refused to pay policy limits to a public utility in respect of over $70 million in losses caused by a series of earthquakes and tsunamis
- Successful prosecution and resolution of lawsuit against property insurer involving $25 million fire loss
- Successful pre-litigation resolution of a multimillion dollar claim against a property insurer for business interruption losses arising from a mass shooting incident
- Successful pre-litigation resolution of a multimillion dollar claim under product contamination/recall policy concerning losses related to pathogen contamination of food products
- Representation of public energy company with respect to D&O insurance and indemnification issues occasioned by alleged multimillion dollar embezzlement by CEO and CFO leading to SEC and state securities commission investigations, criminal prosecutions, and multiple shareholder securities class actions and derivative actions
- Representation of public technology company with respect to D&O insurance and indemnification issues occasioned by SEC investigation and derivative action based on CEO's alleged use of corporate assets for personal purposes
- Successful pre-litigation resolution of claim against professional liability insurer involving multimillion dollar claim arising from alleged error in net asset value calculation pertaining to ETF
- Secured coverage under fiduciary liability insurance policy for multimillion dollar settlement of consolidated class and mass actions alleging improper modification/ termination of retiree welfare benefits in violation of ERISA
- Secured funding for defense costs under series of CGL policies for hundreds of prescription drug-related bodily injury lawsuits pending in MDL
Team
Team
- Christina ArnonePartner
- James D. BassPartner
- Thomas H. DavisPartner
- Steven G. EmersonPartner
- Paulina L. EscobarAssociate
- Barry L. HaithPartner
- Scott C. HechtPartner
- Christopher J. LeopoldOf Counsel
- Michael L. ParrishPartner
- Lynn D. PreheimPartner
- Andrew J. ScavottoPartner
- Stephen SchemenauerPartner
- Christopher B. SevedgePartner
- Marc D. SimpsonPartner
- James M. TorrePartner
- Jonathan R. WaldronPartner