Cohen Ziffer Frenchman & McKenna LLP, which opened its doors in New York in January 2021, is built on the reputations and experience of nationally recognized lawyers who have worked together and represented policyholders as a unified team for more than 20 years, recovering billions of dollars for their clients and securing landmark judicial rulings. The group has earned a national reputation as fierce advocates for policyholders in high-profile, high-dollar disputes against insurance companies. The team—which has tripled in size since the firm’s founding—represents a client base of Fortune 500 companies, hedge funds, and private equity firms.
Many of those recoveries have come in closely watched cases, including a first-of-its-kind appellate decision on flood limit clauses that allowed New Jersey Transit to access $400 million in coverage after Superstorm Sandy. For a pump manufacturer, the firm won a precedent-setting $500 million ruling over insurance coverage for asbestos liabilities. And on issues at the frontier of insurance law, the firm has won multiple significant rulings—dealing with, for instance, damage from email spoofing under computer crime policies and a first-impression test of insurance coverage for SPACs. The firm has also earned a reputation for gaining precedent-setting rulings and shifting the landscape of D&O and E&O coverage in favor of policyholders.
Additional precedent-setting wins in recent high-profile disputes include:
- A rare jury verdict reversal for Conduent State Healthcare in its pursuit of insurance coverage from AIG and other insurers for defense costs relating to a $236 million Medicaid fraud settlement. It was the first jury verdict that Delaware Superior Court Judge Mary Johnston reversed in her nearly 20 years on the bench.
- A series of significant victories for Walmart in a lawsuit against nearly 40 insurance carriers related to coverage for hundreds of millions of dollars in defense costs incurred in defending against thousands of lawsuits arising out of the sale and distribution of opioids and related settlements totaling more than $3 billion. The team recently defeated efforts by dozens of Walmart’s insurers to dismiss their Arkansas action and earned a precedent-setting ruling establishing Walmart’s right to coverage for defense costs incurred in opioid lawsuits.
- A Delaware court ruling that directors and officers of Clover Health Investments Corp. count as “insured persons” under a D&O policy issued to Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp., a SPAC that took Clover Health public. In one of the first decisions addressing coverage for a SPAC, the court ruled that the SPAC’s D&O insurers must pay defense costs for not only the SPAC itself, but also for its future officers and directors.
- A favorable decision for Paramount Global (f/k/a Viacom Inc.), finding that Viacom’s insurers cannot rely on a bump-up exclusion to avoid covering the $122.5 million settlement that had resolved Viacom shareholders’ lawsuit over the company’s merger with CBS.
- A win for Crystal Windows & Doors Ltd. in a dispute over coverage owed for alleged construction defects that allegedly caused over $20 million in damages. The New York Supreme Court dismissed the insurer’s action seeking to resolve its indemnity obligation as premature and, in a precedent-setting ruling, held that the insurer’s acknowledged duty to defend also required the insurer to pay the insured’s costs in defending against the coverage action.
With decades of insurance recovery and advisory experience, Cohen Ziffer also assists clients with their insurance counseling needs, guiding organizations through complex insurance issues and advising on the insurance coverage that is right for them. The firm’s attorneys work with clients and their insurance brokers to identify the most likely liability risks and to review their insurance policies and advise on whether they are likely to cover those risks. When incidents do occur, they also guide their clients through the insurance claims process.
The firm’s commercial litigators are first-rate trial lawyers who also have experience tackling a host of complex commercial insurance disputes on behalf of organizations across the country, and have handled a spectrum of very large, complex, high-stakes, and cutting-edge cases. The team litigates these high-stakes coverage suits in a variety of state and federal courts and tribunals and jurisdictions around the world, and represents organizations in a diverse array of economic sectors, including financial services, manufacturing, professional services, and real estate.
Practice Areas:
- Insurance Recovery
- Insurance Advisory Services
- Commercial Litigation
Updated Aug 2024
