Insurance Coverage Litigation
Experienced and pragmatic insurance litigation counsel
Capabilities at a glance
- Insurance recovery attorneys with decades of experience representing policyholders and insureds, responsible for recovering billions of dollars in insurance proceeds for our clients.
- Highly successful outcomes in numerous state and federal courts across the country, at both the trial and appellate levels.
- A nationally recognized team covering insurance litigation across a broad range of industries, including manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, financial services, industrial, agricultural, construction and real estate.
- Cost-effective, practical solutions and skilled guidance in all insurance-related matters, so you can ensure you reach your business goals.
Pragmatic, full-spectrum legal support for all types of litigation
Our attorneys represent policyholders and insureds in all types of insurance coverage litigation, arbitration and mediation. We can provide you with support for pre-suit disputes and all phases of litigation, from trial through to appeal. Our team is deeply committed to ensuring our clients have the strategic foresight, guidance and advocacy necessary to manage risk. Above all, we bring a pragmatic, cost-effective approach to our legal services, coupled with significant litigation experience in the underlying claims for which coverage is being sought. Whether it’s achieving claims-handling agreements, addressing complex multidistrict litigation and declaratory judgments, or managing bad faith claims against recalcitrant liability insurers, we understand how to translate our clients’ valuable rights under contracts of insurance into effective legal remedies.
Skilled attorneys working across all insurance policy law
Our Insurance Recovery team has extensive experience representing policyholders and insureds in matters involving a broad array of underlying insurance claims, including asbestos, product liability, business torts, employment practices, securities violations, environmental and pollution, property damage, intellectual property, Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), consumer class actions and fiduciary liability claims. We also work closely with our clients in reviewing their insurance programs to ensure they have appropriate and necessary coverage in light of their risk profiles. This includes:
- Minimizing gaps in coverage.
- Minimizing overlapping coverages and coordinating complex insurance programs.
- Proposing detailed revisions to language in the terms, conditions, definitions, exclusions and endorsements of particular policies.
- Assisting in determining retentions, deductibles, retroactive premiums, sublimits, self-insurance and other fronting mechanisms.
- Claims and potential claims reporting, as well as related risk management support.
- Working in conjunction with the client’s risk manager, broker and insurers at renewal or during policy review projects, to assist clients in evaluating policy wording.
Experience
- Property and business interruption
- Commercial general liability (CGL), primary, excess and umbrella
- Cyber risk and privacy, media and e-risk liability
- Directors and officers (D&O)
- Product recall
- Political risk and terrorism
- Workers’ compensation
- Professional liability
- Mortgage and credit
- Crime and fidelity
- Environmental liability
- Admiralty
- Data loss and theft
- Errors and omissions (E&O)
- Fiduciary and ERISA liability
- Employment practices liability
- Representations and warranties
Successes
Old and new HQs: Old and new buildings alike are susceptible to catastrophic property damage — damage for which insurers often prove reluctant to pay, as two Quarles clients can attest. But that is where we come in. We recently represented the owners of one city’s oldest and newest corporate headquarters in obtaining tens of millions of dollars in insurance proceeds for losses arising out of, in one case, a unique, non-flood water event destroying property throughout entire floors of a historic building, and in the other case, an explosion causing damage to multiple buildings under construction and a delay in completion of them.
Herding cats: Our clients, a business and its principal owner, tendered to their insurers a lawsuit asserting direct and derivative claims based on a series of alleged wrongful acts, including securities fraud, disability discrimination, whistle-blower retaliation and assault. The insurers each acknowledged some coverage obligation under their respective policies. But each asserted that exclusions limited coverage, as a result of which some other insurer clearly must be primarily responsible for defending and settling the suit. We addressed the purported limitations of coverage under each of the policies, obtained funding for the defense of the suit from the insurers, and ultimately negotiated a settlement of the coverage dispute that paid for the settlement of the underlying lawsuit.
