Doug’s practice focuses on insurance and reinsurance litigation, including bad faith, extra-contractual and trade practices claims. Doug also represents clients in tort and product liability litigation. Doug has tried cases to jury verdict in state and federal courts.
Doug’s insurance litigation practice is centered on bad faith and extra-contractual litigation. His practice involves various coverages, including commercial general liability, property and casualty, employers liability, professional liability, directors and officers, errors and omissions and specialty policies such as food borne illness and venture capital indemnity. Doug has experience with primary, umbrella and excess insurance as well as facultative and treaty reinsurance. Doug has deep experience in all aspects of coverage and insurance litigation, including providing coverage opinions, reservation of rights and denial letters, and litigating breach of contract, declaratory judgment, unfair trade practices, fraud, misrepresentation, vexatious refusal and common law and statutory bad faith claims.
Doug’s tort litigation practice involves product liability, negligence, breach of warranty, fraud and misrepresentation. Doug has substantial experience in multi-plaintiff and multidistrict product litigation, including mass tort defense and resolution strategies. His experience extends to issues of product stewardship, recall management and regulatory compliance. His scientific background provides him with a unique and valuable perspective on the technical issues inherent in this practice, including issues related to engineering, product development and performance, accident causation and reconstruction, failure analysis, combustion science and fire and explosion cause and origin.
Representative Matters
Block and Ammann v. Nationwide Mutual Ins. Co., Day County, South Dakota, 2012 – defense of an insurer in a multi-million dollar commercial coverage and bad faith jury trial.
Gasoline Container Litigation, 2010-2012 – defense of a gasoline container manufacturer in over 30 separate lawsuits in state and federal courts around the country involving burn injury from product misuse.
Karri Kinnaman-Carson v. Westport Ins. Corp., Jackson County, Missouri, 2009 – defense of coverage and bad faith refusal to defend and indemnify claims relating to a $1.3 million underlying judgment.
Johnson County Parks & Rec. v. Westport Ins. Corp. and Lexington Ins. Co., Jackson County, Missouri, 2008 – defense of coverage and bad faith failure to settle claims relating to a $5 million underlying judgment.
Aon v. Certain Underwriters at Lloyd’s of London, Cook County, Illinois, 2007 – defense of Lloyd’s syndicate in coverage dispute under a directors and officers policy arising from over $100 million in alleged loss related to the insured’s contingent commission practices.
NewCap Ins. Co. v. Employers Reinsurance Corp., USDC D. Kan., 2004 – defense of reinsurance company in jury trial involving coverage for an $18 million underlying judgment.
HTPV Recall Litigation, 2002 to present – defense of manufacturer of commercial and residential gas-fired appliances in numerous cases in state and federal courts relating to an industry-wide recall, in conjunction with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, of high-temperature plastic vent pipe.
Publications and Presentations
Settlement Strategies in Insurance Litigation (2011).
Misrepresentation: Negligent and Intentional, Missouri Tort Law CLE Deskbook (2003, revised and updated 2008).
Notice/Prejudice – When does a notice provision mean what it says? (2006).
Anti-Concurrent Causation Clauses (2006).