Evan Schwartz, Founder and CEO
The Challenge
A lawyer was twice sued by a bankruptcy trustee – in both a preference action for fees paid and in a separate malpractice lawsuit. The lawyer, who held a professional liability insurance policy, tendered the lawsuit to the insurance company, but the insurer denied the claim. Before hiring us, the lawyer had paid a substantial fee for defense counsel and had not taken any action on the denied insurance claim.
The Solution
Schwartz, Conroy & Hack took over the case. Attorney Evan Schwartz, a highly skilled litigator with more than 30 years of insurance legal experience, evaluated the specifics and concluded that insurance coverage for the lawsuit had been improperly denied. But Evan also noted that the trustee’s complaint could have been pleaded in a much better way to ensure coverage. Evan recommended to the lawyer that the best course of action would be to convince the trustee to amend the complaint with allegations that would more clearly be covered under the policy.
We drafted the new complaint for the trustee, and the trustee served and filed it on our client. We then sent it to the insurance company with a letter demanding coverage for the newly pleaded lawsuit, and then reargued that it was covered in the first instance.
The Result
After some battles back and forth, the insurance company agreed to defend the malpractice lawsuit – and it did so without the need to sue. The insurer hired new counsel, and we mediated and settled the entire case, including the trustee’s preference action for fees paid. Because the preference action was not covered under the insurance policy, our client contributed to the settlement, but the insurance company paid the lion’s share of the settlement.
Needless to say, the lawyer was thrilled to end the stress, risk, and costs associated with two lawsuits, which, when we were first hired, looked as though they would cost the client a fortune. Drawing on our deep insurance law expertise and our tenacity, Schwartz, Conroy & Hack forced the insurance company to keep the promises it had made to our client.
