Insurance Litigation & Counseling

For more than 20 years, Crowell & Moring attorneys have been involved in the largest and most complex coverage cases in the country. Our attorneys have litigated hundreds of coverage disputes on behalf of insurance company clients in more than 35 states, Bermuda, and the UK. Our experience has involved a broad range of industries and businesses such as pharmaceuticals, railroads, aerospace, petrochemicals, municipalities, colleges and universities, and health insurance and managed health care industries, as well as a broad range of underlying claims.

Many of our matters have concerned coverage disputes arising out of complex insurance programs such as retrospectively rated programs, captive reinsurance, and other fronting arrangements, where both standard and non-standard coverage issues arise.

Clients call us with their thorniest issues, including:

The interplay between primary and excess coverage in the context of exhaustion, settlements and insolvencies;
The relationship between limits and number of occurrences as they pertain to multi-year and stub year policies;
Allocation, including the effects of settlements, insolvencies and choice of law;
Corporate successorship and named insured issues;
Issues concerning policy exclusions, such as the effect of a statutory cause of action under state law on the application of a worker's compensation exclusion.

In addition to providing substantive insurance coverage expertise, we also:

regularly advise our insurance company clients with regard to emerging insurance coverage issues to help them prepare to meet new challenges in the marketplace;
pro-actively assist our clients to minimize coverage litigation risks by providing product development advice and counseling during the pre-placement phase of coverage;
prepare counsel opinions and help develop short-term and long-term strategies for responding to rapidly evolving changes in underlying liability theories;
help our clients negotiate successful resolutions of disputes and avoid unnecessary coverage litigation whenever possible;
regularly represent our clients in mediations and arbitrations.

For more information on Crowell & Moring's Insurance Coverage Litigation & Counseling practice, please contact Clifford B. Hendler, Paul W. Kalish, Mark D. Plevin, Andrew H. Marks, Deirdre G. Johnson, Jonathan H. Pittman, Kathryn A. Underhill, or Paul N. Alp in Washington, D.C. at (202) 624-2500; Harry P. Cohen in New York at (212) 803-4000; or Steven P. Rice in California at (949) 798-1310.