Insurance Archaeology
The firm provides pro bono insurance archaeology services to its public entity clients to uncover their long-lost historical insurance policies. Historical policies are old, expired policies that public entities (and others) purchased decades ago, which are used today to fund pollution liabilities. Those policies, while expired, are enormously valuable to public entities when forced by litigation or regulatory actions to respond to contamination. Clients’ environmental compliance, often made possible by historical insurance funding, prevents mandatory steep regulatory penalties for compliance failure.
Insurance Recovery
Brown & Winters’ insurance recovery program (IRP) involves procuring insurance proceeds for their clients from these historical insurance policies. For contamination, policies purchased up to the early-1970s fully cover environmental investigation and remediation of contaminants that occurred during these policy periods. Policies purchased between the early-1970s and early-1980s cover pollution only under certain conditions, including sudden and accidental events, known as the “qualified pollution exclusion.” Historically policies typically do not cover contamination if purchased after the early-1980s.
Insurance Litigation and Settlement
It is of high importance to the firm to consider all options on behalf of its clients regarding an insurer’s breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. Its mediation practice is robust, with successful results in complex matters, with multiple parties and multiple insurers. The firm pursues aggressive bad-faith litigation throughout the state against insurers for wrongful denial of coverage and has obtained demonstrated successes.