In this CLE webinar, Anderson Kill attorneys, Cort Malone and John Leonard discuss the state of biometric privacy litigation, the regulatory landscape, and insurance coverage considerations and rulings.
In this CLE webinar, Anderson Kill attorneys, Dennis J. Artese, Ethan Middlebrooks, and Thomas Dupont and professional engineer, Kenneth R. Quigley discuss permutations of policy language and state law that may affect coverage for damage caused by underground climate change, including how state law treats anti-concurrent causation clauses, whether “human-caused” exceptions to earth movement exclusions may apply to underground climate change, and whether “abrupt collapse” exceptions to exclusions for building collapse may apply when undetected structural damage triggered by underground climate change triggers collapse.
The Authors Robert D. Chesler (rchesler@andersonkill.com) is a shareholder in Anderson Kill's Newark office. Bob represents policyholders in a broad variety of coverage claims against their insurers and advises companies with respect to their insurance programs. Bob is also a member of Anderson Kill's Cyber Insurance Recovery group. Bob has served as the attorney of record in more than 30 reported insurance decisions, representing clients including General Electric, Ingersoll-Rand, Westinghouse, Schering, Chrysler, and Unilever, as well as many small businesses including gas stations and dry cleaners. He has received numerous professional accolades, including a top-tier ranking for Insurance Litigation: New Jersey in Chambers USA: American's Leading Lawyers for Business, which dubs him a "dominant force in coverage disputes" and cites a client who calls him "a dean of the insurance Bar; one of the brightest in writing about and analyzing insurance coverage." Amy Weiss (aweiss@andersonkill.com) is a law clerk pending admission in Anderson Kill’s New York office. She focuses her practice on insurance recovery, exclusively on behalf of policyholders. While attending the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Amy worked as a Summer Associate at Anderson Kill and a Judicial Intern for the Honorable Nicholas G. Garaufis at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. She served as Senior Articles Editor for the Cardozo [...]
The Authors Cort T. Malone (cmalone@andersonkill.com) is a shareholder in the New York and Stamford offices of Anderson Kill and practices in the Insurance Recovery and the Corporate and Commercial Litigation Departments. An experienced litigator, he focuses on insurance coverage litigation and dispute resolution, with an emphasis on commercial general liability insurance, directors and officers insurance, employment practices liability insurance, advertising injury insurance, and property insurance issues. John M. Leonard (jleonard@andersonkill.com) is a shareholder in Anderson Kill’s New York, New York, office, where he handles a full spectrum of insurance coverage matters, such as business interruption losses, D&O and E&O, commercial general liability, environmental liability. Joshua A. Zelen (jzelen@andersonkill.com) is a law clerk pending admission in Anderson Kill’s New York office. He focuses his practice on insurance recovery. Interviews with leading attorneys and other subject matter experts on new twists in the law and how the law is responding to new twists in the world. Autonomous Vehicles: The New Technology Driving the Litigation Conversation "The AEV Act requires a policyholder’s insurance company to cover third-party damage caused by a self-driving automated vehicle. A policy may not exclude such damages, except for damages suffered as a direct result of software alterations made without the policyholder’s knowledge, or failure to install safety-critical software [...]
The Authors Robert D. Chesler (rchesler@andersonkill.com) is a shareholder in Anderson Kill’s New Jersey office and is a member of the firm’s Cyber Insurance Recovery Group. He represents policyholders in a broad variety of coverage claims against their insurers and advises companies with respect to their insurance programs. Dennis J. Artese is a shareholder in Anderson Kill’s New York office and chairs the firm’s Climate Change and Disaster Recovery Group. Both are members of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal. Interviews with leading attorneys and other subject matter experts on new twists in the law and how the law is responding to new twists in the world. The ESG Police Have Arrived: Is Your Insurance Ready? "ESG has become a major initiative for corporate America. In particular, the environmental prong of ESG calls for companies to institute sustainability goals and to invest in environmentally friendly companies. This emphasis has both economic and popular support. Environmental sustainability will make companies better able to compete and make their businesses less risky." Abstract: The environmental, social, and governance movement is a positive one, but like many well-intentioned efforts there is room for abuse and risk. As corporations endeavor to earn accolades and good will for “doing the right thing,” they must also be [...]
Insurance Coverage for Sexual Abuse Claims Strategies | Response | Insurance Archeology CLE OnDemand Webinar Sexual abuse claims – such as those involving the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America – have resulted in verdicts and settlements in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. The Catholic church alone has paid billions to resolve claims. Verdicts in cases involving adult victims are typically lower than those involving children and teens. A December 2021 $44 million verdict to a Texas woman who was raped at a Hilton Hotel in Houston could signal that juries may be more open to larger awards in such cases. While rapists and abusers face accountability under criminal law (and sometimes under civil law as well), businesses and institutions of all shapes and sizes are increasingly finding themselves confronting claims that they bear some of the responsibility for instances of sexual molestation, abuse and harassment. Several standard types of liability insurance provide coverage for such claims. In this webinar the panel discusses the elements of this coverage and the sensitive aspects of such claims. If you answer yes to any of these questions, this webinar is for you: Is your organization or your clients at risk of facing sexual abuse accusations? Would your organization [...]
HB presents an Anderson Kill webinar on-demand MAXIMIZING INSURANCE RECOVERY AS CLIMATE CHANGE INTENSIFIES As weather-induced disasters continue to intensify, maximizing insurance coverage after major storms, floods, wildfires, and other natural cataclysms is an essential survival skill for any business. In this session, attorneys who have successfully litigated property, business interruption and contingent business interruption claims from Hurricanes Katrina through Ida, along with wildfire and other major disaster claims, walk participants through all phases of insurance recovery, from buying the right policies to pursuing claims with persistence and awareness of pitfalls, to litigating successfully when necessary. Specific lessons from Hurricanes Sandy (2012), Harvey (2017) and Maria and Irma (2020) will be addressed. Topics: Developing a pre-storm preparedness plan, including mitigation efforts, assembly of a claims team, and insurance coverage review; Moving quickly to protect property from further damage, performing all emergency repairs, and documenting all losses in detail; Preparing and presenting well-supported property damage claims; Recognizing and including business interruption losses and extra expense outlays; Highlighting policy interpretation issues that affect the scope of available coverage; Outlining strategies for pursuing claims and incentivizing the insurance company to resolve them with due speed. On-Demand Registration Includes 1+ CLE credits (subject to bar rules). CLE codes are embedded in the video. CLE questions? [...]
PFAS Insurance Coverage with Robert D. Chesler of Anderson Kill Listen to my interview with Anderson Kill's Robert D. Chesler, a preeminent expert on insurance coverage law especially in the context of highly complex long-tail claims scenarios involving multiple parties and events that can span decades and always cost many millions of dollars. Considered by many to be an insurance guru on these cases -- as well as on D&O, cyber and privacy, and intellectual property insurance -- Bob holds a Ph.D. and masters degree from Princeton University, and a J.D. (cum laude) from Harvard Law School. This podcast is the audio companion to the Journal on Emerging Issues in Litigation, and Bob is one of our most valued editorial advisors. The Journal is a collaborative project between HB Litigation Conferences and the Fastcase legal research family, which includes Full Court Press, Law Street Media, and Docket Alarm. The podcast itself is a joint effort between HB and our friends at Law Street Media. If you have comments or wish to participate in one our projects, or want to tell me how much you learned from Bob, please drop me a note at Editor@LitigationConferences.com. Tom Hagy Host and Litigation Enthusiast P.S. The fact that I make myself laugh during these interviews probably has less to do with the subject matter (most definitely, is more precise) or my sense of humor, and [...]
The Authors Robert D. Chesler (rchesler@andersonkill.com) is a shareholder in Anderson Kill’s New Jersey office and is a member of the firm’s Cyber Insurance Recovery Group. Bob represents policyholders in a broad variety of coverage claims against their insurers and advises companies with respect to their insurance programs. Dennis J. Artese (dartese@andersonkill.com) is a shareholder in Anderson Kill’s New York office and chairs the firm’s Climate Change and Disaster Recovery Group. Joseph Vila (jvila@andersonkill.com) is an insurance recovery attorney in Anderson Kill’s New Jersey office. Climate Change, ESG, and D&O Insurance: Collision or Cooperation? By Robert D. Chesler, Dennis J. Artese, and Joseph Villa Abstract: Climate change has been tied to the recent increase in catastrophic weather events. Insurance coverage for often billions of dollars in damage becomes a source of argument between insurers, who want to limit their exposure, and policyholders, who want the coverage they argue the carriers are contractually obligated to pay. The authors discuss the nature of the underlying suits and the potential coverage issues; the types of policies implicated; cases that have addressed these issues; the rising societal concern over climate change that have played a role in the new corporate emphasis on environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, and the insurance industry’s response to this [...]
Surfside Condo Collapse: A 360-Degree Insurance Coverage Analysis Abstract The horrific and fatal collapse of Champlain Towers South in the summer of 2021 not only shook the ground in Surfside, Florida, but it brought into question the integrity of structures everywhere. If professionals in the construction, real estate, and building management industries were relaxed about signs of structural decay before, they are not anymore. The insurance industry also has reasons to worry, as potentially responsible players turn to their policies to defend or indemnify them for claims for accidents causing losses including from property damage, personal injury, or death. In this article the authors evaluate the factors that are addressed when coverage determinations are made, as well as the various types of policies that come into play. Authors Allen R. Wolff (awolff@andersonkill.com) is a shareholder in Anderson Kill’s New York office, where he concentrates on the intersection of construction litigation and insurance recovery. Allen is co-chair of the firm’s Construction Industry Practice group and Corporate and Commercial Litigation Practice group. He advises and represents policyholders—building owners, developers, contractors, retailers, municipalities, financial institutions, hospitality businesses, condominium associations, and tenants’ associations—in a range of insurance coverage disputes. Allen’s colleagues, Ethan W. Middlebrooks (emiddlebrooks@andersonkill.com) and Jason Kosek (jkosek@andersonkill.com), are also attorneys in Anderson Kill’s New York office. They also concentrate on insurance [...]
