Services

Insurance Recovery

Our insurance lawyers advise on procurement of insurance, engage in dispute resolution over covered losses, and engage in sophisticated restructurings using insurance recoveries, qualified settlement funds, and captive insurance companies. We deliver comprehensive cross-disciplinary services to provide an end-to-end solution to actual and potential liabilities, including through dedicated structures designed to contain and fully fund such liabilities. Our lawyers help clients accomplish their goals through strategic advice, sophisticated deal-making, and dispute resolution in forums across the United States, Europe, and Asia.

We are highly skilled at resolving insurance disputes or enabling a reorganization to proceed by recovering or preserving insurance policy assets for third-party claims. These claims can be product liability, toxic tort, environmental liability, directors’ and officers’ liability, commercial disputes, patent, or copyright and trademark claims, or cyber-related losses. We also handle claims for the recovery of loss from physical damage, business interruption, and mortgage insurance.

Our clients are engaged in the manufacturing, food and beverage, energy, medical device, life sciences, retail, banking, and financial services industries. A number are public and private Fortune 500 companies. In addition to asset protection and recovery, we collaborate with our colleagues who defend clients in mass tort, product liability, environmental, intellectual property, and class action litigation, enabling us to provide a seamless, efficient, and effective response that addresses our clients’ underlying liabilities. We are both trial and appellate lawyers, with litigation experience in more than 30 jurisdictions; eight federal appellate circuits; the highest appellate courts of California, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Iowa, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Texas; and the US Supreme Court.

Our asset protection and recovery lawyers are as comfortable in the boardroom as in the courtroom. We are active in reserving, 10-K, 10-Q, financial reporting, and the tax and securities implications of insurance and associated liabilities. We have specific experience in the tax-advantaged use of insurance and other techniques in the isolation, funding, and management of legacy liabilities. Clients seek our guidance on corporate reorganizations and the use of captive insurance to isolate, fund, and efficiently manage liabilities that surface from discontinued operations. We counsel our clients on the use of captives, qualified settlement funds, and other special purpose vehicles to facilitate risk transfer, reduce taxes and transaction costs, and maximize asset protection and recovery strategies.

Our knowledge extends to umbrella and excess coverage, errors and omissions, fiduciary liability, employer’s legal liability, property and casualty, media liability, surety, bumbershoot, finite risk, coal mine liability, hull, and manuscript policies.

Seamless Teams for Cross-Disciplinary Solutions Providing Services That Cover the Globe

Our US and international practice includes policyholder insurance recovery lawyers practicing in 11 offices across the United States and in London. These attorneys litigate, arbitrate, and settle disputes in the United States, the United Kingdom, Bermuda, Switzerland, Germany, and Israel. We work with colleagues who primarily serve clients with product liability, environmental, business and finance, real estate, and tax practices not only to protect and recover assets for our clients’ business problems, but also to address and resolve the underlying liabilities in a manner that enhances or preserves insurance assets.

Trials, Appellate Practice, Arbitrations, Mediation & ADR

We are trial and appellate lawyers. We also conduct arbitrations, mediations, and other forms of alternative dispute resolution (ADR). We try several major cases every year in federal and state courts across the United States and before arbitration panels both in the United States and internationally, including under Bermuda Form policies in London. Our reputation of trial success and readiness enhances our clients’ recoveries when we are negotiating settlements on their behalf.

Sophisticated Dealmaking

We are also sophisticated transactional lawyers. We structure long-term, complex solutions to insurance disputes using innovative structures, with a view toward tax and other financial implications. Our practice has recovered more than $10 billion in insurance on behalf of policyholders since 2003.

Captives and Restructuring

Morgan Lewis lawyers employ a cross-disciplinary approach to addressing clients’ legal needs. We bring together the knowledge of business and finance, environmental, product liability, real estate, tax, and asset protection and recovery lawyers to counsel clients in corporate reorganization projects. This allows companies to:

Isolate known and unknown long-tail environmental and tort liabilities in separate subsidiaries
Establish a dedicated funding source through the use of a captive insurance company to respond to the liabilities in a tax-efficient manner
Maximize the value of distressed assets and historical insurance coverage
Establish a uniquely qualified professional staff to manage the legacy liabilities efficiently and cost-effectively

These tax-advantaged projects maximize the use of assets for a company to fund, manage, and address its exposure to legacy liabilities in a structure that facilitates future spinoffs of the restructured entities.

Our asset protection and recovery lawyers also “wrote the book”—and continue to add important chapters—on the insurance implications of bankruptcy, including Section 524(g) of the US Bankruptcy Code; on the use of private asset protection and tax-efficient vehicles such as qualified settlement funds or trusts authorized by Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Section 468B in lieu of bankruptcy reorganization to provide dedicated asset protection; and on the use of derivatives and security devices to ensure long-term insurance responsiveness.