Practice Specialties

My experience as a lawyer, government official, and consultant over the past forty-five years has covered a wide range of business and regulatory insurance issues involving businesses in the U.S. and abroad, investment bankers, lenders, insurers and reinsurers, insurance agents and brokers, and governmental bodies – the emphasis of the practice was on the financial, regulatory, and contractual aspects of the business of insurance, nationally and internationally. I have written several hundred articles and speeches and four books on these subjects.

A major and constant part of the practice has involved resolution of and actual litigation about complex issues of insurance coverage both nationally and internationally in almost every facet of property-casualty insurance from liability through property to political risk insurance. For example, as special insurance counsel to The Dow Chemical Company for over sixteen years, I provided advice and counsel to settle or to structure and initiate litigation to resolve a number of significant insurance overage disputes involving Dow products, including Agent Orange, Sarabond, and Benedectin. Other examples include (a) counsel to Union Carbide on the insurance aspects of the Bhopal, India industrial accident and (b) part of the Shearman & Sterling team arbitrating insurance claims arising out of Peru’s expropriation of Enron/Belco gas and oil facilities.

Other areas of special emphasis include advising and performing legal work for many businesses, investment bankers, and lenders on many insurance matters involving liability, property, directors and officers, surety bonds, financial guarantee, and fidelity insurance; planning the structure and content of insurance coverages; creating alternative risk-bearing structures; resolving insurance and insurance regulatory issues in mergers and acquisitions; and dealing with the problems of insurer insolvencies.

Counseling to the insurance industry has included advising and performing legal work for the insurers, agents, and brokers in connection with the development of new coverages, risk and loss management arrangements, reinsurance structures, investments, mergers, acquisitions and consolidations, and a spectrum of regulatory issues.