Insurance can be an extremely important source of funding for the defense of any litigation and the payment of any judgment or settlement in many types of lawsuits. The failure to recognize when coverage applies and how coverage is triggered can adversely affect your clients and may lead to a legal malpractice lawsuit.
In this CLE course Jared De Jong and Timothy Heggem of Payne & Fears discuss the important points that civil litigators and non-insurance attorneys need to know about insurance in order to preserve potential insurance benefits available to their clients. Jared and Timothy discuss the types of insurance that provide coverage and how to identify them, the types of events that trigger coverage, how to maximize the likelihood of triggering coverage, what to do if the insurer fails to provide coverage, how to best proceed if the insurer imposes unreasonable limitations on the defense it provides, and the steps to take if the insurer and insured disagree about settlement. Additional topics discussed include: “claims made” nightmares, sources of policy information, commercial general liability policies, how to trigger the duty to defend, the compliant, denial & delay of coverage, how to proceed if the insurer refuses to pay defense counsel’s full billing rates, the insurer’s right to settle and what to do if the insurer is not defending the suit.
Jared De Jong is an associate at Payne & Fears LLP working in the Insurance Coverage Group. Timothy Heggem is an associate in the Insurance Coverage Group at Payne & Fears LLP.