- Two years ago, a client in the fire suppression business was faced with several putative class actions of nationwide scope seeking damages for allegedly defective fire sprinklers, as well as dozens of individual suits. Although our client initially did not believe it had insurance coverage for these product recall actions, we developed theories supporting coverage and, through coverage litigations in both California and Pennsylvania state courts between 1999 and 2001, we successfully defeated attempts to dismiss the coverage claims and obtained a significant multi-million dollar recovery from the carriers that enabled the client to fashion a global resolution to the class action litigation.
- Over the past year, a major financial institution faced potentially staggering liabilities in multiple litigations alleging professional liability against the company and one of its officers. We successfully pursued the claim with the company’s fiduciary liability carrier, thereby enabling the company to resolve the difficult and complex claims.
- Over the past year, a contractor client was faced with multiple product liability and governmental enforcement actions arising out of alleged environmental contamination. Although the company’s product liability and environmental carriers took the position that they owed minimal, if any, coverage to the client, we persuaded the insurers to provide full coverage without the need for a coverage litigation.
- In a multi-site/state environmental coverage matter pending in New Jersey state court involving both private party and governmental plaintiffs over the cleanup of manufacturing sites for electrical and electronic equipment, the Firm sought to recover defense costs in a motion for summary judgment. The insurer raised several policy defenses, including the pollution exclusion; however, the court accepted the Firm’s arguments which characterized the allegations of the underlying complaint as broad enough to include sudden and accidental events. The total defense costs at issue ran into several millions of dollars.