Insurance policies are complex contracts drafted exclusively by insurers and governed by constantly evolving, state-specific laws, leaving many businesses exposed to unexpected coverage denials and unplanned financial losses. Lathrop GPM has a nationwide team of attorneys dedicated solely to representing policyholders and risk managers, combining decades of industry experience with a proven track record of successfully helping clients secure the maximum benefits of their coverage. Our attorneys pursue favorable resolutions through settlement and litigation, while also providing proactive counseling to help clients procure the right coverage and avoid disputes before they arise.  

With the highest possible ranking by Chambers USA, one client said, “Lathrop GPM has excellent, experienced and highly intelligent lawyers. The firm is our first choice whenever we are facing complex or sophisticated litigation or insurance issues.”

Why Choose Us

  • Policyholder Advocacy: In all types of property and casualty insurance, we represent only policyholders, providing conflict-free counsel focused on maximizing coverage and recovery.
  • Proven Results: Our team has recovered over $2.8 billion from insurance companies for clients.
  • National Reach with Midwestern Roots: Our strong Midwestern foundation enables us to deliver the sophistication and quality of a coastal-based firm at more competitive rates. By combining lower operational overhead with attorneys from top-ranked academic institutions or trained at AmLaw 50 firms, we provide practical, high-caliber solutions without the premium pricing often associated with major markets.
  • Recognition: As one of only a handful of Am200 Law Firms that provide policyholder-exclusive services, our practice and attorneys are recognized nationally by Chambers USA, Benchmark Litigation, National Law Journal, Lawdragon, Business Insurance, Ingrams, The Best Lawyers in America, Super Lawyers and more.
  • Education: We empower policyholders to better understand their policies through resources like The Policyholder Project: Insurance Literacy, a video series designed to clarify insurance concepts and terminology and our insurance recovery blog, The Road to Insurance Recovery, which breaks down important decisions and industry-specific issues for policyholders.

Comprehensive Services

The insurance lifecycle is complex, and missteps early on can lead to costly coverage gaps later. Our practice is built around supporting clients from the ground up, ensuring they are protected long before a claim is ever filed. When can we help?

Policy Procurement and Renewal: We regularly advise clients and their brokers during policy procurement and renewal. This includes reviewing policy language, negotiating terms and shaping underwriting submissions to mitigate risk and improve outcomes in the event of a loss. We help clients understand what their policies cover – and what they don’t – so they can make informed decisions. We’re also often asked to review broker agreements and consult on risk management frameworks that align with business needs.

Coverage Evaluation and Claim Positioning: When a loss occurs, our attorneys act quickly to evaluate coverage, assist with the tendering of the claim and advise on initial communications with insurers. We leverage deep knowledge of insurer practices and underwriting history to frame our clients’ claims in the most advantageous way. Whether the issue involves sudden property loss, business interruption, data breach or a long-tail environmental exposure, we help clients present strong, well-documented claims that are positioned for early resolution.

Dispute Resolution and Litigation: When disputes arise – whether due to denial of coverage, reservation of rights or disagreement over defense obligations – we engage insurers directly to resolve issues efficiently. Our attorneys have successfully negotiated high-value settlements without ever filing suit, but we are equally prepared to litigate when necessary. Our litigation team has prevailed in precedent-setting cases, including a significant win before the Fifth Circuit that protected policyholders by rejecting insurers’ attempts to rely on common law coverage trigger theories to avoid their duty to defend. Similarly, a recent watershed win before the Eighth Circuit rejected an insurer’s attempt to utilize COVID-19 era cases and theories to deny coverage for fire particulates, instead finding that soot, char, smoke and water damage from a fire can constitute direct physical loss covered under an all-risk property policy. Our approach is always calibrated to the client’s business goals, whether that means preserving carrier relationships, maximizing recovery or resolving matters quietly and quickly.

Specialized Knowledge: Our team is well equipped to maximize coverage through experience in complex issues, including allocation among multiple policy years, number of occurrences, insurer insolvency, London market claims, defense cost caps and the right to independent counsel. We conduct insurance archaeology to locate historic policies, especially for long-tail claims. Our deep bench and technical command of nuanced insurance principles allows us to guide clients through any type of claim.

Coverage Experience

  • Additional Insured & Indemnity Disputes
  • Appeals & Amicus Briefs
  • Bad Faith
  • Business Interruption Claims
  • Civil Rights Insurance Recovery
  • Commercial Automotive Insurance
  • Commercial General Liability
  • Cyber Liability & Data Breach Claims
  • Directors & Officers (D&O) Insurance
  • Employer’s Liability
  • Environmental Insurance
  • Errors & Omissions (E&O) Insurance
  • Insurer Insolvencies
  • London Market and Legacy Coverage
  • Long-Tail Exposures
  • Natural Disaster/Catastrophe Recovery
  • Organizational Misconduct
  • Property & Builder’s Risk
  • Public Entity Insurance
  • Reinsurance
  • Representations & Warranties Insurance (RWI)
  • Risk Pools
  • Workers’ Compensation Insurance

Insurance Archaeology

Our team has conducted insurance archaeology for numerous clients, helping them uncover historic policies that may hold the key to resolving long-tail liabilities. Whether the exposure stems from environmental contamination, asbestos, PFAS, latent torts or legacy product claims, we specialize in tracking down elusive coverage – particularly from London market insurers – where documentation is often incomplete or decades old. This work is more than investigative; it’s strategic. By reconstructing policy histories and identifying viable coverage, we’ve enabled clients to access billions in insurance proceeds that would otherwise remain buried. Our deep familiarity with policy language evolution, carrier archives and cross-border coverage issues makes us a trusted resource for clients facing complex, high-stakes claims.

Brokerages

Our firm advises insurance industry businesses and professionals, as well as policyholders, across a broad range of professional liability (errors and omissions) matters. Drawing on our industry knowledge and experience, we recognize and help to mitigate the risks faced by policyholders, brokers and risk managers.

Amicus Support

Our team prepares insurance-specific amicus briefs that advance policyholder interests by illuminating coverage principles, contextualizing statutory and regulatory frameworks, and correcting misconceptions that could create harmful precedent across the country. We work closely with clients, trade groups and nonprofit organizations to ensure our briefing is both persuasive and genuinely useful to the court’s analysis. With deep experience in insurance recovery litigation and appellate advocacy, we deliver amicus briefs that resonate with courts and meaningfully influence the development of insurance law.

Industries Served

Our insurance recovery and counseling practice draws on extensive experience across a broad spectrum of industries. The list below represents just a selection of the sectors we support. With a deep understanding of complex challenges and a commitment to innovative solutions, we are well-equipped to address the unique needs of clients within any industry.

Experience

  • Business Interruption: Served as lead counsel for a major oil company, successfully prosecuting nine-figure insurance claims under business interruption policies arising from the Olympic pipeline explosion.
  • Property Damage and Business Interruption: Seeking insurance recovery under first and third-party policies for landlord facing catastrophic losses for building repair and lost rents.
  • Property Damage: Secured a $27+ million verdict for a client in a federal jury trial after a two-alarm fire caused extensive property damage and business interruption losses, as well as additional awards for the insurer’s vexatious refusal to pay and policyholder’s attorney’s fees.
  • Medical Monitoring: Represented a regional engineering company in claims against its insurers to fund an $80 million settlement of a medical monitoring class action lawsuit brought by citizens who claimed to be exposed to asbestos in a local courthouse.
  • Insurance Archaeology: Negotiated a multimillion-dollar settlement for a client who did not realize it had coverage until we recovered policies during an insurance archeology review.
  • Complex Bad Faith Actions: Represented large national waste management company in breach of contract and bad faith claims against insurers and sought damages for environmental losses. We resolved more than 10,000 claims in 40 states concerning 400 sites against 60 insurer groups and recovered more than $100 million in settlements over a 10-year period.
  • Environmental Recovery: Represented a brownfield redeveloper in a range of complex claims, including personal injury, property damage and enforcement claims arising from the implosion of a historic smokestack and the resulting dust cloud that spread into the surrounding residential areas. The policyholder recovered more than $15 million in coverage.
  • Notice of Claim: Provided guidance on how and when to give notice to maximize coverage for a large, publicly held client for a notice for a potential future multimillion-dollar class action lawsuit.
  • Directors & Officers Insurance: Won summary judgment for policyholder against D&O insurer who refused to provide coverage for fraud claims asserted against indemnified former directors and officers.
  • Advice & Counsel: Helped obtain coverage to resolve numerous personal injury and property damage claims and implement forward-looking risk management strategies.
  • Asbestos: Recovered insurance funding for wrongful death settlement and workers compensation claims where decedent and surviving spouse both claimed exposure as employees and take-home exposure to asbestos from each other.
  • Precedent-Setting Civil Rights Recovery: Represented three wrongfully convicted men in a Fifth Circuit case, establishing that insurers cannot use common law coverage theories to avoid their duty to defend. This precedent benefits policyholders facing long-tail claims, including asbestos exposure, and demonstrates our ability to achieve impactful results for insurance recovery clients. Since then, Lathrop has represented dozens of wrongfully convicted individuals against insurance companies to obtain funds for underlying settlements and judgments.
  • Coverage Litigation: Litigated complex coverage claims arising from a high-profile public incident, with multiple cases pending in federal and state courts. Addressed procedural challenges including federal abstention in favor of parallel state-court actions and forum selection for insurer declaratory judgment actions following the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling in McCrackin.
  • Amicus Briefs: Filed amicus brief in the Illinois Supreme Court on behalf of organizational clients in the manufacturing industry regarding the notorious pollution exclusion in commercial general liability policies to shape the future of the exclusion in favor of policyholders across the state.

Experience

  • Located policies and prepared a notification matrix for a $1 billion client who needed assistance in properly notifying its carriers of toxic tort claims.
  • Negotiated a multimillion-dollar settlement for a client who did not realize it had coverage that resulted in a settlement after our team conducted an insurance archeology review.
  • Negotiated claims with several London market and domestic insolvent/runoff carriers and collected sizable settlements for our clients.

  • Advised a client with due diligence involving the purchase of a large company with toxic tort claims. The legal team helped the client determine if coverage existed for the claims, and the information assisted the client with determining whether to complete the transaction.
  • Provided guidance on how and when to give notice to maximize coverage for a large, publicly held client for a notice for a potential future multimillion-dollar class action lawsuit.
Meet the Team

Primary Contacts