Overview
Carlton Fields' litigation practice for insurance companies contributes to our capabilities in reinsurance and lets us provide these services cost-effectively. Our experience with many kinds of insurance and financial products strengthens our ability to serve clients in reinsurance dispute resolution, reinsurance transactions, reinsurance counseling, and regulatory matters. We have litigated and arbitrated issues involving all lines of business, including property and casualty and life and health, as well as actuarial and accounting practices, the acquisition of entire books of business, sales practices, bad faith, and breach of contract, and we have served as counsel of record in hundreds of class actions.
On the dispute resolution side, we represent cedents, reinsurers, retrocedents, and retrocessionaires in life, health, and annuity reinsurance disputes and in property and casualty disputes involving recoverables, aggregation, allocation, and coverage under catastrophe treaties. We also handle disputes between insurers and reinsurers and their agents and brokers, as well as matters involving producer-owned reinsurance companies and other captive reinsurers, including tax issues, the bankruptcy of an owner, and entities domiciled in Bermuda and the Turks and Caicos. We also provide coverage opinions and pre-dispute counseling to help clients resolve issues with counterparties before litigation or arbitration.
Our transactional reinsurance work covers purchases and sales of reinsurers and reinsurance underwriting management companies, as well as loss portfolio transfers, and we negotiate and draft reinsurance agreements and trusts, treaty amendments, and treaty wordings and guidelines across life, health, annuity, property, and specialized lines. That experience extends to alternative risk transfer mechanisms, including catastrophe bonds and sidecars, along with assumption reinsurance, run-offs and commutations, reinsurer insolvencies, and due diligence in insurance company mergers and acquisitions. We also counsel clients on regulatory matters before state insurance departments and have been retained as special counsel to those departments.
Experience
Life, Health, and Annuity Reinsurance
Represented cedents, reinsurers, retrocedents, and retrocessionaires as lead counsel in disputes over a reinsurer's ability to enforce rate change provisions in yearly renewable term (YRT) reinsurance agreements, an issue that has emerged in recent years.
Represented parties in pricing, actuarial, and administrative disputes involving life reinsurance treaties, including claims of fraud in the inducement based on actuarial or underwriting misrepresentations.
Represented parties in disputes over underwriting and submission obligations, including a cedent's duty to disclose internal replacement life insurance policies, a reinsurer's facultative underwriting obligations, violations of treaty underwriting standards and guidelines, and a reinsurer's right to contest claims ceded on an automatic basis.
Represented parties in disputes over the scope of a reinsurer's indemnity obligations, including the application of errors and omissions clauses and the follow-the-fortunes and follow-the-settlements doctrines to administrative errors and agent and broker misconduct, and the interplay between errors and omissions coverage and reinsurance cover.
Represented parties in matters involving recapture, the duty of utmost good faith, the scope of extra-contractual obligations and excess of policy limits (ECO/XPL) provisions, claims handling, and industry custom and practice in the life, long-term care, and annuity reinsurance context.
Represented a participant in hundreds of reinsurance treaties in the London Personal Accident reinsurance market in a series of arbitrations in the U.K. and the defense of a major U.S. arbitration involving claims exceeding $100 million. The representation included advising on a strategy for managing and defending multiple arbitrations and lawsuits in this market, and representing the client in the U.S. arbitration and a related lawsuit.
Property and Casualty Reinsurance
Acted for cedents and retrocedents in disputes with reinsurers and retrocessionaires over the collection of reinsurance recoverables arising from various lines of business.
Represented clients in arbitrations related to the aggregation of claims under the event wording of catastrophe treaties.
Secured a multimillion-dollar award for a client with respect to asbestos billings, where the issues involved aggregation and follow-the-fortunes.
Represented a client in an arbitration involving late notice and bad faith claims handling.
Represented clients in arbitrations concerning the number of occurrences, allocation, annualization, and aggregation issues related to clergy abuse, sexual and physical assault, toxic tort, asbestos, pollution, and construction defect claims.
Represented a cedent in an arbitration involving the scope of extra-contractual obligations (ECO) and ultimate net loss (UNL) provisions.
Represented a major insurer of windstorm risks in resolving issues with its reinsurer.
Represented cedents in disputes over the recoverability of commutation-related payments and follow-the-fortunes and follow-the-settlements implications.
Represented a client in a dispute concerning the recovery of declaratory judgment and bankruptcy-related expenses.
Represented an insurer in a dispute with its managing general agent concerning underwriting violations.
Represented an insurer in disputes with its agents concerning contingent commissions.
Represented clients in matters involving salvage and subrogation recoveries, including one in which the panel granted summary judgment for our client.
Represented clients in matters relating to insolvencies.
Represented an aviation insurance pool in litigation to secure increases in letters of credit following 9/11 and other large aviation losses.
Represented clients in multiple arbitrations involving surety bond claims.
Prevailed for insurers in disputes with their managing general agents over issues including profit commissions.
Devised and implemented a strategy for a global insurer to resolve a major reinsurance dispute with the reinsurance market.
Obtained summary judgment in an arbitration for a client, which was also awarded panel fees and costs in addition to compensatory damages.
Acted in disputes between captive insurers and their reinsurers, including a dispute between an insurer and a captive acting as its reinsurer.
Transactions and Counseling
Counseling a reinsurer and its affiliates on complex cessions and retrocessions of life product risks involving entities in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Bermuda.
Assisted in a loss portfolio transfer of medical malpractice risks from a group of medical facilities and providers to a major property and casualty insurer and reinsurer.
Closed a commutation of a reinsurance treaty for a property and casualty insurer seeking to exit its treaty with a large international reinsurer that had been downgraded by A.M. Best, and commuted a treaty with a group of Lloyd's syndicates covering long-tail liabilities of a casualty insurer.
Representing ceding and assuming companies in structuring and documenting complex property and casualty and life and health reinsurance treaties, including risk transfer and related regulatory compliance issues.
Represented the ceding insurer in creating a billion-dollar reinsurance program that included traditional reinsurance, umbrella cover, and what was then the largest catastrophe bond ever placed. The catastrophe bond provided fully collateralized two-year reinsurance cover at a fixed price and was sold to capital market participants, some of which do not participate in the traditional reinsurance market.
