I have almost thirty-five years experience litigating in both state and federal courts.  That includes jury and non-jury trials and numerous appeals embodied in reported opinions.  Those cases have involved personal injury, coverage, bad faith, agents and broker issues, life & health, ERISA, insolvency, excess and reinsurance, and class action defense issues.  I also have extensive experience in antitrust, securities, defamation, intellectual property, employment, professional liability, commercial, bankruptcy, and real estate litigation outside the insurance context.

Early in my career, I focused on life & health bad faith cases.  I was among the original proponents of the use of the ERISA statute to resist extracontractual claims against insurers issuing policies to employee benefit plans.  Later I represented a Georgia-based insurer in a successful defense of claims brought against it by the receiver of an insolvent multiple employer trust.  This ultimately resulted in what was, at the time, the largest attorneys fees award ever granted under the ERISA statute to a prevailing defendant.  The case was the subject of a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal.  And, on the same day Executive Life Insurance Company was declared insolvent, I won dismissal of ERISA claims brought against that company as an outgrowth of the alleged sales practices of one of its agents in sales to a number of VEBA trusts.  The court found all state law claims were preempted, and that no ERISA claim had been or could be stated.

I was lead counsel for a major property & casualty insurer for environmental coverage claims brought against it and other insurers by Montrose Chemical Corporation.  This litigation resulted in two major California Supreme Court decisions defining defense and trigger of coverage issues.  While serving as a company general counsel most recently, I successfully resisted class certification of a case brought by one of California’s most prominent plaintiffs’ lawyers questioning the company’s policy reinstatement practices.  I also helped secure a voluntary dismissal of a class action brought against a number of leading insurers by another of California’s leading plaintiffs’ attorneys alleging improper vehicle appraisal practices.  In the well-known Krumme agent/broker case, I successfully resisted plaintiff’s $80 million restitution claim despite the trial court’s finding against my client on the merits.  In the equally prominent Donabedian case, while the dismissal with prejudice we won in the trial court was overturned on appeal, the record we developed in the trial court set the stage for the subsequent settlement of that case at a level far below what similarly situated companies paid on the same issue.

We also represent plaintiffs in litigation against insureds and insurers in meritorious cases not creating conflicts of interest with our insurer clients.