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services | insurance practice
Sometimes even the best plans and precautions can’t provide the protection you need. That’s why you have insurance. And when you pay your premiums month after month, you expect your insurance company to step up when you have a loss.
When your insurance company gives you the run-around, Schwartz Kelly, LLC is here to force your carrier to honor its commitment to you. We have a proven track record of getting insurance companies to pay our clients’ losses, and even to pay our fees as well.
Protecting Your Progress…Every Step of the Way
Our insurance lawyers will provide sage advice on the full range of coverage issues, including:
- Timely notice of claim and tender of defense
- Duty to defend and right to control defense
- Self-insured retentions, gaps in coverage and overlapping coverage
- Bad faith claims and claims for extra-contractual damages
- "Trigger" of coverage and "allocation of damages" issues in long-tail tort cases
- Coverage for "property damage" claims
- Insurance procurement
We work with you to secure insurance under a variety of policies, including:
- Commercial general liability insurance for claims related to asbestos, products liability, environmental, premises and hostile fire liability
- Construction insurance
- Environmental coverage
- Errors and omissions policies (including professional liability policies for attorneys, physicians, accountants, architects, engineers, realtors and ERISA fiduciaries)
- Directors and officers' liability policies
- Specialty lines excess and umbrella policies
- Surplus lines policies
From litigation prevention to the appeals process, our attorneys are committed to providing one-on-one attention and representation:
- Negotiating and drafting claim service agreements and policy endorsements
- Evaluating and drafting insurance and indemnity provisions in corporate transactional documents
- Presenting claims and drafting tender and bad faith letters to insurance companies
- Supervising and monitoring lawsuits that present potential excess or uninsured exposures
- Representing insurance policyholders in arbitrations, appraisals, coverage suits, and appeals
Representative Matters
Food Equipment Manufacturer Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex County. We prosecuted two appeals in which the Appellate Division overturned the trial court’s decision to dismiss the insurance coverage case based on New Jersey’s Entire Controversy Doctrine. See full text of the appeals.
Tank Removal Contractor Superior Court of New Jersey, Hudson County, Chancery and Law Division. We successfully represented a tank removal company in obtaining insurance coverage, defense and indemnification against a carrier who unilaterally changed the policyholder’s coverage and deductible amounts in its renewal policies. See the text of the Chancery decision and the Law Division’s decisions.
Insulation Contractor Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex County. We represented the insurance policyholder in a lawsuit brought by its insurance company for asbestos-related losses. The insurance company sought to rescind the insurance policy based on alleged misrepresentations by the insured. After several days of trial before a Superior Court judge, the Court entered judgment in favor of our client, ordered the insurance company to provide defense and indemnification against the asbestos claims and awarded our client attorneys’ fees and costs. See the trial court’s decision; final judgment and order granting attorneys’ fees and costs.