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Practices

REINSURANCE

At Litchfield Cavo LLP, we stay on top of trends and strategies that protect clients in all manner of reinsurance issues, including negotiation, litigation and alternative dispute resolution.

Litchfield Cavo attorneys appear on behalf of reinsurance clients in state and federal trial and appellate courts, in mediation and before arbitrators and represent cedants, reinsurers and retrocessionaires for both international and domestic insurers. Our attorneys have significant experience anticipating and preventing future disputes, and are skilled litigating environmental and latent health, construction defect and coverage matters with associated trigger and allocation issues including long-tail, delayed manifestation issues involving multiple policies and multiple years of coverage.

Our attorneys are extremely versed in interpreting a wide variety of reinsurance instruments, including proportional and non-proportional facultative reinsurance certificates, excess of loss treaty reinsurances, surplus share, pro rata, quota share and retrocession agreements, including those related to the following issues:

  • Follow-the-fortunes
  • Pre-answer security
  • Loss adjustment expense allocation
  • Utmost good faith
  • Aggregation and allocation
  • Extra-contractual liability

In addition, our Firm includes senior-level attorneys who have either consulted or testified as expert witnesses on reinsurance matters and were chosen due to their experience and their resources to keep current with court decisions and developments in reinsurance law.

Our Reinsurance Record

  • Successful arbitration for a treaty reinsurer. Issues in the case included determining the number of loss occurrences, allocating loss over multiple treaties, the follow-the-fortunes doctrine and extra-contractual liability.
  • Representation of a reinsurer in commutation negotiations. Our client’s initial offer was eventually accepted.
  • Representation of a cedant in court. Issues in the case included the follow-the-fortunes doctrine, trigger of coverage and allocation.
  • Acted as a consultant and expert witness in reinsurance litigation involving the application of a computer model to allocate a settlement to reinsured policies issued over time in different coverage layers.