Arent Fox has for decades maintained a strong, multidimensional insurance coverage practice representing policyholders and additional insureds in a number of businesses, including real estate owners, developers, construction companies, engineering and design firms, and manufacturing companies.
We have extensive experience pursuing claims such as property damage, complex environmental (including disputes over the appropriateness of replacements, remediations, etc.), business interruption and products liability as well as those under specialized insurance policies covering builders risk, owner-controlled insurance programs for construction projects, financings, environmental contamination, anticipated revenue, fiduciary insurance, directors’ and officers’ liability, professional errors and omissions, and most property and casualty off-the-shelf and manuscript policies issued to insureds or for the benefit of our clients. We also have considerable experience in providing risk-management advice to clients to anticipate their coverage needs and in negotiating policies that provide the broadest possible coverage to meet those needs.
Arent Fox helps clients overcome exclusions related to construction defects and other matters in order to obtain coverage under general liability, directors’ and officers’, errors and omissions, construction-related and property policies. We understand that the coverage available under such policies is frequently a necessary component of achieving a resolution of the disputes that may arise in a construction failure or collapse, and we have helped our clients use the proceeds of insurance to achieve successful resolutions of such disputes.
In negotiating payments from insurers, we have frequently had to address questions important to the overall limits of liability provided by the policy, including whether or not given events comprise multiple “occurrences”; the impact of the trigger of multiple insurance policies for a single occurrence or set of related occurrences; the applicability of deductibles, self-insured retentions and retrospective premiums; and other areas of recurrent dispute between policyholders and insurers. At times, our practice has also involved the successful assertion of claims against insurance brokers regarding the placement of insurance.
