Flanagan, Barone & O’Brien’s (f/k/a Purcell, Mulcahy & Flanagan) Insurance Defense and Coverage team provides representation and counsel to insurers, insureds, brokers and agents, corporations, individuals and other business clients. We have over thirty years of litigation experience representing clients in insurance defense and coverage matters. Our representation of insurers and their insureds in litigation involving multiple lines of coverage is the lynchpin of our firm’s continued success. Our insurance expertise covers a wide spectrum of policy types, including comprehensive general liability (“CGL”), title insurance, errors and omissions (“E&O”), employment practices liability (“EPL”), professional liability (e.g., attorneys, engineers, and architects), directors and officers (“D&O”), automobile, products liability, fidelity bonds, nursing home, first-party property, homeowners, life and health.
We have successfully defended insurers in insurance coverage suits including bad faith litigation. Our firm provides advice to insurers on coverage and claims handling and drafting of coverage opinions and reservation of rights letters. Many of our attorneys have years of in-house experience handling claims and supervising panel counsel. This experience enables us to evaluate claims and defend lawsuits from the dual perspectives of insurer client and panel counsel borne from this background.
When representing insureds, our attorneys are adept at defending against a wide array of personal injury claims involving CGL, Homeowners and Auto policies. We frequently try personal injury cases yet also look for opportunities to effectively resolve matters through motions or cost-efficient settlements. In high risk multiparty suits involving myriad issues such as those relating, ,but not limited to, construction, products liability and dram shop, we always seek indemnification and/or contribution from other sources either to eliminate or minimize exposure to our insurers and their insureds.
We also defend insureds in cases involving employment law, construction law economic tort claims, breach of fiduciary duty and malpractice. These cases often involve aggressive motion practice to resolve liability issues and or eliminate those counts which are without legal basis. We have successfully filed summary judgment motions and motions to dismiss to resolve cases against our corporate, government and individual clients in the earlier stages of litigation.
Few areas are more conducive to successful motion practice than our work for title insurers which spans nearly four decades. We have successfully asserted and defended against priority issues relating to competing mortgagees and have won summary judgment in cases involving equitable subrogation, modifications and mortgage discharges. We have also successfully defended against fraudulent transfer and mortgage fraud claims some of which concluded favorably after bench trials, others through motion practice or favorable settlements. Our attorneys successfully brought the most expansive quiet title action in the State of New Jersey involving the New Jersey Pinelands. We also have initiated and defended against every possible challenge to title impacting countless individual and corporate insureds.