Areas of Practice

REINSURANCE

The Firm represents clients in a variety of reinsurance arbitration and litigation matters involving a wide scope of issues. These matters range from following the settlement issues to technical accounting and cession issues to rescission and original underwriting intent issues. The Firm has successfully represented reinsurers on many long tail related issues, including allocation and aggregation. We represent cedants, reinsurers and retrocessionaires. We also have extensive experience in international pool disputes, including issues involving the extent of underwriting authority, retrocessional recoveries, fronting issues, and insolvency of pool agents and participants.

We have a breadth of experience in insurance insolvency proceedings. We have been involved in developing plans of liquidation and have litigated issues of statutory preference. We have represented receivers, guaranty associations, and cedants and reinsurers of insolvent companies.

The Firm maintains files on qualified arbitrators and experts. The Firm directs and participates in reinsurance claims and underwriting audits. We also regularly draft treaty wording, underwriting agreements, and other contractual documents and provide legal advice and counseling both to reinsurers and cedents.

COVERAGE

The lawyers in the Firm have a broad range of experience handling insurance coverage and bad faith issues. We have handled cases involving professional liability, general liability, directors and officers, environmental, surety, property and miscellaneous errors and omissions coverages. We have initiated declaratory judgments on behalf of underwriters and have defended several major environmental liability coverage disputes, involving hundreds of insurers. In addition, we have handled and tried numerous duty to defend and excess cases and have handled excess cases both on behalf of primary and excess insurers.

Lawyers at the Firm have litigated issues at the trial and appellate level involving both claims made and occurrence policies, including several cases establishing the scope of coverage provided under each type of policy as well as issues involving triggers, etc.

The Firm's lawyers have detailed knowledge of both U.S. and London market policy wordings and of litigated coverage issues involving both manuscript and standard form policies.

Some of our reported cases have been the seminal cases in various jurisdictions concerning trigger of coverage, appraisal clauses and duty to defend.

Many of our cases have involved underwriting intent and have been litigated on the basis of placing slips or binders where no wording was issued prior to the loss. Some of these cases involve placements, etc. We have conducted extensive investigations and have developed evidence far beyond what is available in the retained placing files to achieve successful results.

PROFESSIONAL LIABILITY

The Firm routinely handles cases involving a wide range of professionals, including lawyers, architects and engineers, and insurance brokers.

Our attorneys are experienced in defending lawyers in an array of matters from statute limitations issues to complex bankruptcy and securities issues. While generally our experience in this particular area has been concentrated in the mid-Atlantic region, we have also supervised cases nationally.

We have defended both domestic and international insurance brokers in matters ranging from personal lined to complex London market reinsurance placements. Several of our cases have involved allegations of fraud and misrepresentation on the part of the broker and we have successfully defended each of these. We have a detailed knowledge of the business of insurance and reinsurance, which enhances our representation, as we have extensive experience in technical issues, such as net accounting, and multi-layer placements.

Members of the Firm regularly, and successfully, have defended the interests of design and construction professionals, including architects and engineers. Whether AAA arbitration, jury or court trials, we have handled every aspect of the design or implementation claims from investigation through final verdict or award.

GENERAL LIABILITY

The Firm's lawyers have been involved in a broad range of general liability matters ranging from premises and automobile to products, advertising, injury, and environmental. The Firm also defended cases in the related area of business interruption.

We have confronted a range of damage issues from bodily injury to hedonic loss and economic injury and worked with a range of experts from medical to accident reconstruction and product design.

Because of the Firm's emphasis on sophisticated and complex litigation matters, its lawyers have always welcomed, for their complexity and challenges, the handling of general liability claims . Early coordination with, or even retention of, appropriate experts, and hands on field investigation are two important steps in the process by which the Firm handles general liability matters. Clients have found that our representations are both cost effective and aggressive due to the experience of the attorneys in the Firm, and also due to the systems and support personnel that the Firm employs in complex cases.

Much of our work in this area involves multiple defendants, often with conflicting interests. We pay special attention in this type of situation to make an early assessment of when settlement opportunities will be optimal given the greater complexity of proof.

We consider early mediation to be an increasingly useful tool to resolving many general liability cases at an early stage.

If a matter warrants, we use sophisticated methods of presentation, such as accident reconstruction and computer generated demonstrative evidence. We believe that foreshadowing to a plaintiff that we are prepared to make a sophisticated trial presentation often moves a matter to earlier resolution.