Peter M. Gillon
+1.202.663.9249

Robert L. Wallan
+1.213.488.7163

View all Insurance Recovery & Advisory Professionals

Law360 recognized Pillsbury’s Insurance Recovery & Advisory team as one of 2010’s “Insurance Groups of the Year.”

Pillsbury’s Insurance Recovery & Advisory practice is among the oldest in the firm and one of the first insurance practices in the United States. In the aftermath of the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, Pillsbury represented building owners, wineries and other businesses in coverage disputes with their carriers. This work established important precedent in the law of property insurance, while providing vital assistance to the task of rebuilding the city.

Today, drawing upon a century of experience, our internationally recognized Insurance Recovery & Advisory practice vigorously advocates for policyholders in coverage negotiations and disputes with their insurers. We have helped policyholder clients recover billions of dollars from their insurance carriers.

Pillsbury’s insurance recovery lawyers represent corporate and institutional policyholders in every major industry – from airlines to energy companies. We routinely negotiate placement and enforce coverage rights under all major lines of insurance, including:

• Aviation
• Bond
• Comprehensive General Liability (CGL)
• Credit
• Directors and Officers (D&O)
• Errors and Omissions (E&O)
• Environmental
• Fidelity
• Fiduciary
• Employment Practice Liability Insurance (EPLI)
• Life
• Marine
• Media
• Nuclear
• Product Liability
• Property
• Other specialty coverages

We also advise clients on insurance and risk transfer issues in connection with some of the most complex transactions. Among other reviews, we often conduct due diligence on insurance coverage as a corporate asset in the context of a merger, acquisition or investment.

Pillsbury’s Insurance Recovery & Advisory group is an integrated national network of professionals who use their deep understanding of the insurance business to devise practical and appropriate strategies and solutions for our clients. We understand that resolving insurance disputes often requires creativity and a sound commercial approach to the parties’ positions. Our clients – and insurers – often remark, that we “get it,” where other firms frequently do not . On the other hand, our attorneys are not reluctant to use their experience and skills as litigators to enforce our clients’ rights when litigation is necessary. When needed, we also have the ability to leverage the firm’s full litigation capabilities. We have resolved coverage disputes through various means, including arbitration, mediation and informal claims negotiations, as well as through litigation in federal and state trial and appellate courts around the country.

Members of our practice have been ranked as leading insurance recovery practitioners by Chambers USA, PLC Which Lawyer?, Best Lawyers in America, Euromoney’s Guide to the World’s Leading Insurance and Reinsurance Lawyers, and Who’s Who Legal.

Our practice offers three broad types of services to our clients:

Claims Litigation and Settlement
Pillsbury’s claims litigation and settlement services  begin ideally with framing the presentation to the insurer in an initial notice, guiding our client through the initial discussion with the insurers – often resulting in early resolution of the claim. Before resorting to litigation, our attorneys may engage in extensive negotiations with insurers, mediation or other alternative dispute resolution procedures, where such an approach is deemed to provide the best approach for recovery. When needed, our attorneys are prepared to litigate coverage through arbitration, trial and appeal in the U.S., Bermuda, and the UK.

Our attorneys have successfully prosecuted some of the largest and most high-profile insurance coverage cases. For example, the team has helped clients recover from the devastation caused by storms including Hurricanes Ike, Ivan, Katrina, Rita and Wilma. Members of the team are handling insurance coverage claims for MOEX Offshore, one of the two minority investors in the Macondo deepwater drilling project that gave rise to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. The team represented United Airlines on business interruption loss arising from the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Our attorneys have negotiated an energy company’s precedent-setting settlement of coverage claims arising from multibillion-dollar securities class actions, litigated the first bad faith claim involving an environmental cost-cap policy, obtained rulings invalidating the nuclear insurance industry’s standard pollution exclusion, and one of the fidelity bond market’s key defenses, and established numerous other pro-policyholder precedents.

Insurance Counseling
Although not insurance brokers, the Pillsbury team works closely with our clients’ brokers and other advisors in evaluating enterprise risk,  and structuring the appropriate coverage. We have extensive experience with the structuring and placement of pollution and cleanup cost-cap policies, and in creating specialized liability transfers. We are frequently called upon to provide a  “second look” at coverages to ensure that the client has the most advantageous terms and wordings, and to negotiate with insurers to secure appropriate enhancements to coverage. The firm’s proprietary D&O Review permits clients to benchmark their coverage against best-available enhancements in the current marketplace. We also advise clients and assist in structuring pooled risk or captive insurance programs.

Having learned that preparing for disasters is as important as responding to them, we provide consulting and risk management services to assist our clients in negotiation, review and placement of policies before losses occur. We also assist our clients with other risk management issues, including contractual indemnity rights and related efforts to minimize their potential exposure to losses that may adversely impact their businesses. In particular, companies should now have cyber-liability policies to insure themselves against data security and privacy claims, and a large insurance market has evolved to cover these risks.

Insurance Insolvency
Pillsbury has significant experience in representing policyholders and creditors in the insolvencies of a number of insurance carriers, including Executive Life, Fremont Indemnity and Superior National. In the Executive Life litigation, our trial and appellate lawyers established principles of ratable claim treatment governing rehabilitation and liquidation plans in what is a short list of the leading published decisions in the field of insurance insolvency. In doing so, Pillsbury obtained the first known appellate court rejection of an insurance regulator's proposed rehabilitation plan.