Civil Rights Insurance Recovery

Lathrop GPM leads the nation in negotiating settlements to compensate those who have been wrongfully convicted and has secured three of the largest settlements in history for these claims. Our Civil Rights Insurance Recovery Practice represents exonerees in §1983 civil rights lawsuits brought against the public entities responsible for their wrongful incarcerations. In addition, the Practice represents individuals and their families in other high-dollar cases against public entities such as claims for wrongful jail deaths, school shootings, and excessive use of force.

Our team knows that insurance recovery is often the key to helping the wrongfully imprisoned to vindicate their civil and constitutional rights. We partner with the nation’s leading civil rights law firms to aggressively pursue settlements under liability policies insuring public entities. Since our first success in 2004, we have helped litigate numerous wrongful conviction and wrongful death cases, recovering nearly a quarter of a billion dollars for individuals and their families.

Lathrop GPM’s deep knowledge in insurance recovery law allows our firm to recover insurance proceeds in civil rights cases where other law firms have failed. Our team members use their decades of knowledge and experience representing corporations against recalcitrant insurance companies to achieve exceptional results for newly exonerated individuals and their loved ones.

In a decision that is sending shockwaves through the insurance industry, our team recently prevailed at the 5^th Circuit on behalf of three wrongfully convicted men against multiple insurers on a duty to defend case. The case establishes that insurers cannot utilize common law “coverage theories” (e.g., “first manifestation” or “first exposure” or “continuous trigger” theories) to sidestep the plain language governing their policies. While the win immediately benefits the families of wrongfully convicted men, the implications will help business clients vindicate their rights to insurance proceeds to cover liabilities for other “long-tail claims” including asbestos exposure cases. This win represents the latest demonstration of our ability to apply deep knowledge of insurance principles to create the most desirable outcomes for our insurance recovery clients.