Practice Areas Insurance Coverage and Bad Faith Litigation and Analysis

We provide analysis, advice, and litigation services on matters arising from every type and every line of insurance.

Our work includes the evaluation and litigation of issues, including:

• Coverage Analysis and Opinions
• Defense of alleged Insurance Bad Faith and IFCA claims
• Preparation of effective Reservations of Rights language
• Duty of Defense and Indemnity Issues
• Additional Insured Questions
• Excess / Primary Insurer Relations
• Good Faith Claims Handling
• Exhaustion of Limits Considerations
• Construction Defect Coverage Disputes
• Multiple Occurrence and Trigger Evaluations
• Multiple Claimant / Insufficient Limits Situations

Forsberg & Umlauf’s coverage and extra contractual litigation group stays on top of changes in the law impacting our clients and regularly communicates those changes to our clients. We do this in four concrete ways:

First, when a new coverage or extra contractual state or federal decision is issued which changes, confirms or adds an important nuance to existing law, we send an “E-lert” (emailed summary of the new decision) within 24 hours of the decision being issued. No more than one page, these “E-lerts” let our clients know in the first paragraph what to be aware of from the new decision, with an invitation to call a Forsberg coverage and extra contractual litigation attorney to discuss any future impact that decision may have for them.

Second, coverage group members regularly speak and chair panels at outside seminars discussing coverage and extra contractual matters. We may be found at WDTL’s annual insurance seminar, Northwest Insurance Law Conference’s annual seminar, and seminars at Claims Litigation Management, Defense Research Institute, NBI, King County Bar Association and the Washington State Bar Association, and a myriad of other speaking engagement venues. We pride ourselves on our collective expertise in all matters of insurance and extra contractual exposure, with eight of our group of 12 attorneys each having practiced in these areas for twenty years or more, and our four younger attorneys developing specialty practices (i.e., UIM bad faith, environmental, first party commercial coverage and bad faith) complementing our knowledge base. We can talk with you about IFCA, CPA, negligent claims handling and common law bad faith, and we encourage you to call for a free consult.

Third, we believe it is our supreme responsibility when clients come to us with a problem, to bring them to a better outcome. We strive to head problems off before they balloon. Especially with potential extra contractual matters, we endeavor to steer our clients to preventative measures to alleviate exposure. We do this with in house seminars (supporting CLE and MCLE credits for attorneys and adjusters), in which we offer clear, practical common-sense advice to stave off extra contractual claims before they arise or to minimize these claims when they do arise. We encourage clients to request this free service. In this way, we partner with our clients to prevent future bad faith and related extra contractual claims.

Finally, we prepare and annually update our Legal Reference Guides (LRGs), on coverage (in both Washington and Oregon) and extra contractual matters (in Washington). Our coverage and extra contractual attorneys create and edit these LRGs every year, providing an additional depth of knowledge, including new key cases that we share with clients. Any client who would like an LRG on coverage or extra contractual matters just has to ask and we will email the most recent version to you.