Our dedicated team tries insurance coverage and bad faith cases and handles appeals for the world’s largest insurers and reinsurers in courts and ADR proceedings across the country. We also provide counseling and advice on complex coverage issues involving a full range of specialty and CGL matters. Our team is one of only a handful of nationally recognized groups that both counsels and tries to verdict complex insurance coverage disputes involving Fortune 100 companies.
Led by Ronald Schiller, who Chambers USA recognized as “someone who consistently wins big cases,” our team of more than 20 dedicated coverage lawyers makes Hangley Aronchick one of the go-to firms for trials and appeals for a broad range of insurers and reinsurers. As litigators who take several cases to trial every year, we have extensive start-to-finish experience in coverage and bad faith litigation, including the handling of post-trial motions and appeals, in some of the most difficult jurisdictions. Hangley Aronchick lawyers have provided coverage advice and tried cases around the country, handling matters in 25 states, as well as in London, the Cayman Islands, and Bermuda; since 2014, we have tried eight cases to verdict or decision, and have argued a dozen appeals in the state and federal appellate courts. We are devoted to insurance coverage matters including specialty lines (D&O, E&O, and Professional Liability), General Liability matters, reinsurance disputes, and bad faith litigation and counseling. We have broad experience in business products (D&O coverage and underlying disputes and E&O, whether professional liability coverage, managed care coverage, or other forms), fiduciary and fidelity claims, disputes involving brokers and auditors, GL policy litigation (especially with respect to long-tail exposure cases), and first-party property cases and related bad faith claims. Our representations commonly include cases with total-claim values in the hundreds of millions of dollars and involving recurring issues of related claims, disgorgement, and other contract based defenses.
Our insurance dispute resolution practice also includes representing insurers (and reinsurers) in arbitrations and mediations nationwide. In addition to litigation and dispute resolution, we are retained regularly to draft and review policy forms, provide coverage opinions, and to monitor claims, and our extensive litigation experience brings a unique perspective and added value to those engagements. We look at issues with a broad perspective to resolve not only the immediate problem but to provide guidance on what may arise in the future.
Meet Our Insurance Coverage TeamOur practice group is composed of more than 20 lawyers dedicated to solving complex insurance coverage issues. We are responsive, collaborative, thorough, and persistent, but we value complete commitment to excellence in client service above all other traits.
We are litigators who can handle all facets of a case from pre-litigation negotiations, though litigation, post-trial motions, and appeals throughout the country. We are quick to adapt to the constantly evolving legal landscape, and we are equally adept at providing strategic advice, monitoring claims, and drafting and reviewing policy wording.
We bring our deep understanding of all lines of coverage — developed over decades of litigation and appellate experience — to every matter for every client. The combination of broad industry experience, trial and appellate courtroom experience, and in-depth knowledge of insurance coverage sets us apart.
Over the past decade, our team has developed one of the nation’s leading healthcare E&O and professional liability practices, uniquely providing both coverage advice and acting as trial counsel in numerous matters. Hangley Aronchick attorneys have been on the front lines in developing and litigating complex coverage positions, including pacing the industry on antitrust, RICO, and ERISA based defenses in the healthcare and managed care industries. Our institutional knowledge of the relevant primary and excess policy forms and provisions, as well as our frequent role as lead counsel in multi-party insurer cases, has afforded us both insight and standing among insurers writing this product line (and their outside counsel) that is second to none.
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We have handled D&O insurance coverage claims involving the full spectrum of insured entities, industries, and underlying actions. These matters range from claims arising from high profile accounting scandal cases, securities class actions, shareholder derivative and direct actions, and mergers and acquisitions, to employment related disputes, governmental investigations and litigation, and False Claims Act litigation.
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Our E&O and professional liability coverage experience includes not only trying cases to verdict but also counseling and monitoring roles in matters involving personal or advertising injury, equipment inspections, lending practices, and financial rating services.
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We regularly represent clients in disputes involving claims for coverage arising from data breaches, theft of software and digital intellectual property (including related licensing and trademark issues), network security issues, internet liability, privacy, and media liability.
Our team has more than 15 years of experience analyzing and litigating transactional risk coverage issues. We have litigated, arbitrated, or negotiated to resolution coverage disputes arising from matters involving private and publicly traded companies in the manufacturing, service, and technology sectors, for CNA, Chubb companies, and other insurers.
Our group has a varied and extensive long tail liability coverage practice, including asbestos, environmental, and emerging toxic tort claims (e.g., benzene and other deleterious substance claims). We handle all aspects and phases of long tail coverage disputes, ranging from initial coverage analyses to mediation and/or trial practice and appellate work. As part of our work over the last 25 years, we have litigated a wide variety of issues including the proper scope and interpretation of so-called “asbestosis” or “asbestos products” exclusions; interpretation of both the sudden and accidental and absolute pollution exclusions based on regulatory and drafting history as well as custom and usage evidence; characterization of asbestos claims as products/completed operations claims versus pure operations claims; characterization of asbestos claims as a “single occurrence;” and proper application of various states’ trigger theories and allocation methodologies among multiple policy years and layers.
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Hangley Aronchick attorneys regularly represent insurers in cases arising from products liability and construction defect actions. Our practice is national in scope and covers all facets of representation, from advice and counseling to trial and appellate work.
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Members of our team are frequently asked to provide advice on some of the leading issues in advertising injury coverage disputes across the country and have been called upon to help resuscitate, on post-trial motion and appeal, a case in which these issues were lost at trial in Florida state court. We have helped create law favorable to insurers on questions involving what constitutes “widespread” and/or “public” distribution of alleged advertising material and continue to help our clients reach advantageous settlements based on our aggressive development of novel and winning defenses.
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Our team routinely represents insurers in first party disputes arising from real and personal property damage and related business interruption claims in multiple jurisdictions. We have represented one of the nation’s leading boiler and equipment breakdown insurers, providing coverage advice and litigation support in several actions in state and federal court. We have represented insurers in property and income loss claims stemming from natural disasters such as hurricanes, addressing related bad faith issues, and defending against insureds’ attempts to invade “pattern and practice” claim procedures. We have also represented a leading insurer in connection with World Trade Center claims and related bad faith litigation.
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Our coverage lawyers routinely handle high-stakes bad faith litigation for commercial insurers across the country. Our approach to these claims combines aggressive motion practice with our bad faith trial experience to help narrow the contours of extra-contractual relief available and to minimize our client’s extra-contractual exposure. We have defended and tried bad faith cases before both judges and juries with successful outcomes and have created favorable law for insurers in the process. We have provided counsel, are handling, and have handled through successful settlement, argument, and/or trial bad faith matters in more than 20 states and frequently assume control of matters after a coverage trial for the subsequent bad faith litigation.
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We handle reinsurance counseling, arbitrations, and litigation, both for cedents and reinsurers, involving facultative contracts across numerous underlying product lines, including healthcare, D&O, and professional liability, with recent emphasis on healthcare matters involving wholly owned subsidiaries of hospital and managed care chains. We routinely advise clients on reinsurance disputes, addressing issues involving batching, follow-the-fortunes, breach of the duty of utmost good faith, and rescission. We are currently handling several reinsurance matters involving Bermuda and Cayman Islands captives, including a matter in Bermuda arbitration under the Bermuda International Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1993.
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