Related Practices
- Complex Litigation
- Cross-Border Litigation
- E-Discovery & Document Retention
- Worldwide Arbitration & Dispute Resolution
Professionals
Reinsurance Litigation, Arbitration, & Counseling
Steptoe’s Reinsurance group regularly represents cedents and reinsurers in high-profile arbitrations and litigation involving the full range of reinsurance issues in the United States, Europe, and Bermuda. Our experience spans all classes of business, including life and health, property and casualty, workers’ compensation, and alternative financial products. We also counsel clients on a wide range of reinsurance issues.
Lawyers in our London office have been extensively involved in the convergence of insurance, reinsurance, and other financial issues. For example, our London attorneys are currently advising on the use of insurance policies to obtain Basel II regulatory capital relief, and on disputes arising out of the transfer to insurers of risk under credit-default swaps.
Our attorneys are continuously involved in virtually all of the cutting-edge issues that have given rise to disputes within the industry, both substantively and procedurally. Substantively, our lawyers have successfully represented clients who have had significant exposures to the following:
- workers’ compensation carve-out business
- London market excess of loss (LMX) business
- first dollar major medical business
- pharmaceutical liability issues
- environmental and asbestos exposures
- large life insurance and annuity programs
- business written by MGUs and pools
- brokerage bid-rigging issues
- professional negligence issues
- financial guarantee issues
- surety issues
- alternative risk transfer (ART) programs
- hurricane, wind, and flood damage liabilities
- film finance losses
- captive insurance company claims
- ceded employment discrimination liabilities
- US credit-for-reinsurance issues
Procedurally, we have addressed the full range of topics faced by ceding companies, reinsurers, and retrocessionaires:
- the duty of utmost good faith
- follow-the-fortunes
- rescission/avoidance
- reformation/rectification
- claims administration
- allocations
- issues relating to the authority and performance of pool managers, managing general underwriters, and other agents
- choice of law issues
- late notice issues
- international jurisdictional issues
- honorable engagement clauses
- access to records clauses
- cancellation clauses, including clauses triggered by a “change of control”
- cedent insolvency issues
- cut-through endorsements
- pre-hearing security issues
Many of the firm’s partners and of counsel are active in ARIAS-US and/or ARIAS-UK, and regularly write and speak on reinsurance topics of contemporary interest.
Representative Matters
- We represented a group of pool members in multiple actions arising out of the malfeasance of a reinsurance pool manager. The representation, which involved both federal court litigation and arbitrations, required us to resolve numerous disputes with companies that had ceded business to the pool, as well as a multitude of issues relating to the pool manager's misconduct.
- We represented a group of retrocessionaires in multiple arbitrations involving LMX and underpriced workers’ compensation carve-out business that was ceded by a reinsurer under a multiple-year quota share treaty. The business at issue had produced underwriting losses in excess of $1 billion.
- We have appeared in the London Court of International Arbitration on behalf of a US cedent as to claims against a Bermudan-based reinsurer over surety and alternative risk transfer (ART) business. The work required the coordination of US and UK counsel as to general sophisticated issues relating to discovery. The total claims at issue in this arbitration were valued at over $100 million.
Noteworthy
- On behalf of several reinsurers, we recently obtained an arbitration panel award rescinding a very large block of workers’ compensation carve-out business that had been written in Bermuda by an MGU who was determined not to have had authority to write that business for a cedent.
- On behalf of a reinsurer, we recently secured an arbitration panel award that compelled a retrocessionaire to bear its proportionate share of liabilities. The retrocessionaire had challenged its liability based on the quality of the underwriting that had been done by the reinsurer’s agent.
- On behalf of a professional liability insurer, we recently compelled a group of London-based reinsurers to honor their obligations to follow a settlement that was in excess of $100 million that had been reached by the insurer with an underlying insured.
Select News & Events
Publications
- October 2008, Global Reinsurance
- July 2008, Insider Quarterly Summer 2008
- August 2005, 20 Mealey's International Arbitration Report No. 8
- 2004
