The Firm is rich in experience providing coverage advice (and defending that advice) involving all manner of personal line, commercial general liability and manuscript policies. Moreover, the Firm has extensive jury trial experience successfully defending carriers in the hostile bad faith litigation environment in California.

The Firm includes several highly experienced coverage and bad faith attorneys. John Brydon, Heidi Hugo and Robert Farrell, who comprise the senior core of this practice group, combine for over 65 years of insurance litigation experience involving dozens of major insurance companies. John Brydon has spent the vast majority of his 26-year legal career dealing with coverage and bad faith issues and has been trial counsel in numerous bad faith cases. He has obtained defense verdicts, dispositive pre-trial and in-trial rulings, voluntary dismissals or favorable resolution in scores of bad faith cases he has personally handled.

Insurance coverage litigation has been a major part of Mr. Brydon's practice. He was trial and appellate counsel in Buss v. Superior Court, in which he successfully argued before the California Supreme Court the seminal decision vesting insurers with the right of reimbursement of defense expenses for non-covered claims in mixed coverage actions. He also personally handled and argued PPG v. Transamerica Ins. Co., another California Supreme Court case of national significance, wherein punitive damages imposed against an insured in a failure to settle case were held not recoverable by the insured in a subsequent bad faith action. That ruling resulted in the complete dismissal of the insured's underlying bad faith lawsuit. (He also tried and obtained a defense award for the primary carrier in a companion equitable subrogation lawsuit in that case, which was filed by the excess insurer who paid nearly $3 million of the underlying compensatory judgment.)

Mr. Brydon has been involved in the oversight of major lines of insurance business for several carriers, providing coverage and claims handling advice on a company wide basis. These programs have involved personal lines such as non-standard auto programs, as well as novel commercial programs with non-ISO wording. He has defended coverage positions involving conventional and non-conventional risks ranging from automobile accidents, construction claims (developers, general contractors and subcontractor insureds), surety bonds (Mr. Brydon obtained a defense verdict in the last surety bond bad faith case to be tried in California before the Supreme Court abrogated that tort), to entertainment & sports claims (e.g. Sony Pictures; Bruckheimer Productions; Prince, Bruce Willis; the NBA), pollution issues, intellectual property matters, products liability claims and inter-insurer coverage disputes.

In addition to his litigation and trial experience, Mr. Brydon has been a speaker and panel member at several coverage and bad faith seminars for the California Association of Defense Counsel and DRI. He was recently invited to speak on developments related to the handling of independent counsel issues (Cumis) and he has advised carriers and other attorneys on issues relating to fee allocations following the Buss decision. He and others in the Firm have assisted carriers in the oversight of independent counsel and participated in fee reviews.

Heidi K. Hugo, a partner with the Firm, co-manages the coverage and bad faith practice with Mr. Brydon. She has spent most of her legal career handling insurance coverage litigation and providing coverage advice to insurers under virtually all types of policies. She devoted two years representing CNA Insurance Companies exclusively in a broad variety of matters arising in all West Coast jurisdictions gathering valuable in-house experience and insight.

Earlier in her career, Ms. Hugo represented Underwriters at Lloyds in the landmark environmental coverage case, Shell Oil Co. v. Accident & Casualty Ins. Co. of Winterthur, et al. She was involved in all aspects of that case including law and motion and pretrial discovery and work-up. She has litigated declaratory relief, bad faith, and agents and brokers actions, as well as various other insurance contract disputes in all state and federal courts in California. Ms. Hugo is currently representing a major insurance carrier in a coverage and bad faith lawsuit pending in Federal Court in Nevada, involving one of the major casinos in Las Vegas.

Another senior member of the Firm's insurance practice group is Robert Farrell, who is a senior litigation counsel with over 22 years of experience involving environmental insurance claims and environmental coverage matters, including Proposition 65 and RCRA litigation. In addition to his former association with the environmental coverage practice group at Rivkin, Radler & Kremer, Mr. Farrell was also former Enforcement Counsel for the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), responsible for prosecuting violations of Federal natural resources and environmental statutes. He also has considerable experience in litigating insurance coverage issues in first party property insurance claims and he has extensive experience in the handling of bad faith insurance lawsuits. He also has litigated and managed complex construction coverage litigation and is currently acting as monitoring counsel for a major excess insurer in a complex class action construction defect lawsuit involving a once widely used problematic roofing product.

In addition to the three core senior coverage and bad faith attorneys, many of the Firm's associates are actively involved in supporting the insurance litigation practice and have extensive experience in law and motion, discovery and trial preparation of coverage and bad faith litigation matters.