Insurance Coverage
When disruptions arise, O’Melveny helps preserve the insurance bargain—repelling attempts to rewrite policy language and upend insurance law.
When disruptions arise, O’Melveny helps preserve the insurance bargain—repelling attempts to rewrite policy language and upend insurance law.
Natural disasters. A public health emergency. The largest sexual-abuse bankruptcy in history. When catastrophic events threaten to reshape the insurance industry, O’Melveny works with clients to ensure that coverage falls within policy provisions—and to turn back attempts by claimants to read novel theories into contractual language.
With comprehensive knowledge of insurance law and profound insight into the insurance industry, our global team guides clients throughout every kind of insurance matter, offering counsel on coverage disputes, reinsurance issues, arbitration proceedings, contested bankruptcies, appellate strategies, regulatory enforcement, and more. Whether fending off an onslaught of pandemic-related business-interruption claims or litigating a sexual-abuse bankruptcy with tens of thousands of claimants, O’Melveny’s insurance practice is at the forefront of the most critical insurance and reinsurance issues of our time.
Our services include:
Coverage Disputes
Our team is renowned for delivering successful results in the most challenging insurance matters, from major coverage and reinsurance cases to disputes involving casualty and property insurance. Our litigators have had a hand in virtually every major mass tort coverage case of the past 25 years.
Bankruptcies
With extensive experience at the intersection of insurance and bankruptcy, O’Melveny is a leader in representing insurers in bankruptcies where parties are wrestling over coverage and proceeds. Our team excels at developing innovative strategies for arranging relief for our insurer clients, and O’Melveny has guided them through contested bankruptcies, securing favorable results through litigation and negotiation.
Appeals
Known for its creative and sophisticated appellate strategies, O’Melveny’s nationally recognized Supreme Court and appellate litigation group is an invaluable asset to our insurance clients, obtaining decisions that have clarified insurance law.
Cyber and Data Coverage
O’Melveny has helped clients navigate countless complicated cyber and data coverage claims, advised them on security and privacy concerns, and counseled them in creating and underwriting new products.
Healthcare
Our deep, multidimensional practice has represented healthcare insurers in complex class actions, civil litigation, and antitrust and enforcement matters. We are lead counsel for most of the prominent insurers in the Medicare Advantage program in disputes with far-reaching implications, affecting the structure and stability of a government program that provides care to more than 24 million Americans.
International
Our global insurance practice has clients all over the world, but it specializes in representing those in Asia and throughout the Pacific. We have advised clients on complex and high-value claims under policies governed by the laws of England, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, China, and Australia, among others.
Secured significant victories for our client in the Boy Scouts of America’s chapter 11 plan, driving the restructuring of the plan and the injunctions and releases, and presenting evidence instrumental in obtaining judicial approval.
Succeeded in overturning a Second Circuit precedent, changing caps on reinsurance defense costs. The court abandoned the controversial Bellefonte rule, aligning reinsurance with the underlying policy's treatment of defense costs.
Going toe to toe with a billionaire homeowner, O’Melveny secured a jury-trial victory in a dispute over damage and loss caused by a wildfire and rainstorms in Santa Barbara’s Montecito community. The jury in the Central District of California took just two hours to reject the homeowner’s claim for $20 million in coverage.
In a landmark Delaware Supreme Court ruling, O’Melveny secured a decision that Chubb was not obligated to defend its insured, a nationwide drugstore retailer, in opioid-related lawsuits.
Stepping in as lead trial counsel for Chubb, O’Melveny secured victory in an Eastern District of New York case over storm damage from Hurricane Sandy, convincing a jury that the flood exclusion in plaintiff’s insurance policy barred coverage for its hurricane-related flood damage.
Turned the tables on an unlicensed demolition company that appeared to be cruising to a windfall against Endurance (now Sompo Holdings, Inc.). Parachuting in, our team took a closer look at the contractor’s insurance application, discovering that the family-owned company had made material misrepresentations that rendered the policy void from the start.
Secured a California Court of Appeal win affirming rejection of a COVID-19 coverage suit brought by United Talent Agency against Chubb affiliate FIC. The ruling is the first published appellate decision under California law to directly address the “presence” theory of COVID-19 business interruption coverage, making clear that the mere “presence” of virus particles on surfaces does not establish “direct physical loss or damage.”
With the COVID-19 pandemic triggering a wave of coverage claims, O’Melveny served as lead counsel for the insurance industry before the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, successfully opposing consolidation of hundreds of disparate individual cases and class actions.
Facing a wave of claims over jets allegedly stranded in Russia following that country’s invasion of Ukraine, a prominent multinational insurer turned to O’Melveny to defend it in the largest aviation insurance dispute since 9/11. International aircraft leasing companies are seeking insurance coverage for billions of dollars’ worth of aircraft leased to Russian airlines. The matters are scheduled for trial.
O’Melveny represents TIG Insurance in disputes with Montrose Chemical over allegations of DDT contamination of the Los Angeles Harbor. After a four-day bench trial, the court upheld the Pollution Exclusion, a win for insurers resisting efforts by policyholders to overturn California laws regarding pollution exclusion.
Law360 Insurance Practice Group of the Year: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2012
“This is an extremely talented group of attorneys who are dedicated to the insurance space.”
—Client Testimonial, The Legal 500 US
“Insurance companies are turning to them for some of the biggest and most complex cases.”
—Client Testimonial, Chambers USA
“They work seamless[ly] from different offices with great collaboration and mutual respect.”
—Client Testimonial, The Legal 500 US
“They are the gold standard for coverage work.”
—Client Testimonial, Chambers USA
“The team represents major insurers in high-stakes litigation, as well as guiding them through complex arbitration proceedings. The firm also has significant transactional and regulatory practice nationwide and is skilled in handling complex cyber coverage disputes and health insurance matters.”
—Chambers USA