Depth & Breadth

Bryan Cave knows insurance and understands your business.  Bryan Cave’s Insurance Recovery Cross-Team realizes that your insurance represents a significant business asset and will work to maximize your investment in insurance coverage in connection with business functions ranging from defense and indemnification when claims are asserted, to transactions involving the valuations of assets or stock purchases.

As part of a leading business and litigation firm with a global reach, Bryan Cave’s Insurance Recovery Cross-Team members and their clients draw on the collected experience and knowledge of Bryan Cave attorneys across the globe.  With Insurance Recovery Cross-Team attorneys resident in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, London, Washington, D.C., Irvine, St. Louis, Kansas City and Phoenix, Bryan Cave is ready to assist you coast-to-coast and internationally wherever you need us.

Members of Bryan Cave’s Insurance Recovery Cross-Team have represented policyholders across a broad spectrum of industries, insurance lines and policies, regulatory settings, and in all types of complex insurance claims, including:

• Environmental Liability and Pollution;
• Mass Torts;
• Mass Litigation;
• Toxic Tort Liability;
• Directors and Officers Liability;
• Product Liability;
• Construction Defects and related matters;
• Commercial General Liability and Casualty;
• Excess Insurance Claims;
• Surety and Fidelity;
• Market Product and Regulatory Investigations;
• Errors and Omissions;
• Professional Liability;
• Employment Practice Liability;
• Insurance Insolvency, both domestically and internationally;
• Property and Casualty;
• Business Interruption;
• Crime and Theft;
• Title;
• Aviation;
• Intellectual Property;
• Specialty Risk Lines; and
• Reinsurance.

A substantial part of Bryan Cave’s insurance recovery practice is devoted to counseling and advising clients.  We regularly provide counsel regarding mass and toxic torts, product and environmental liability, insurance insolvencies, self-insured retentions, captive insurance issues, directors and officers lines, and errors and omissions policies.  We frequently appear before corporate boards of directors to advise them on director protection, including D&O insurance and indemnification.

Our Approach

If at all possible, we want to avoid expensive and time-consuming litigation.  To that end, we employ our best experience and sound judgment to provide the value you demand.  Sometimes it is better to negotiate.  Sometimes it is better to get tough.  Bryan Cave will tailor its representation to fit the needs of your particular coverage battle.  However, our strategy always focuses on quick resolution, thereby minimizing the risk of protracted litigation, through proven procedures that combine project organization, information exchange and negotiation.  That strategy specifically includes:

• Assessing the underlying loss, available coverage and legal and factual issues bearing on potential recovery.
• When necessary, conducting a thorough historical review and reconstruction of the coverage program to maximize potential recovery.
• Notifying coverage providers as early as possible.
• Creating and presenting a persuasive, multimedia claim description to provide carriers the information they need to resolve claims favorably and expeditiously.
• Preparing settlement demands where claims are disputed.
• Representation in any civil coverage action, including all phases of discovery, motion practice, trial and appeal.
• Focus on information exchange and settlement demands.
• Orchestrating and conducting Alternative Dispute Resolution proceedings.
• Providing objective and practical coverage analysis.
• Negotiating policy terms and identification of coverage gaps.
• Assisting clients with insolvent insurance carriers, both in liquidation proceedings and Guaranty Fund recoveries.

Experience

Members of Bryan Cave’s Insurance Recovery Cross-Team have decades of experience successfully representing policyholders and are recognized leaders in their fields.  As a client, our reputation and relationships with insurance carriers work to your benefit to maximize results.  Our experience allows us to use the most cost effective methods to reach optimal results consistent with your goals and timetable, with State of the Art information, knowledge and management working efficiently on your behalf.