Insurance Coverage/Defense

For decades, Semmes has provided counsel and advice to its clients regarding all aspects of insurance coverage and coverage litigation. As a result, Semmes has earned regional and national recognition in this area.

Semmes has numerous clients for whom its attorneys regularly provide advice in drafting and interpreting policy language and exclusions. In addition, Firm attorneys are regularly involved in coverage litigation. Such matters include commercial and personal lines, excess insurance, reinsurance and fidelity and surety. Semmes’ coverage attorneys regularly represent clients in environmental and mass tort coverage litigation on both local and national levels, and we serve as both local and national coordinating counsel. The Firm’s clients include domestic and international underwriters.

In addition, our attorneys are active in counseling insurance clients facing bad faith allegations and in defending bad faith suits. We are well known for our proficiency in defending such litigation in state and federal courts, both regionally and nationally. This reputation extends to the appellate level where Semmes’ attorneys have successfully preserved favorable trial court outcomes through their expertise in appellate briefing and argument at all levels.

Insurance Defense Litigation

Dating back to the origins of Semmes, Bowen & Semmes over a century ago, insurance defense litigation has always occupied a core position in the Firm’s practice and growth. Consequently, Semmes enjoys a longstanding reputation for its expertise in insurance defense litigation and its commitment to effective and efficient representation in this area.

Semmes’ attorneys are proficient in defending lawsuits in both state and federal courts, regionally and nationally. They try cases defending individual insureds in all manner of claims involving potential liabilities covered by auto, homeowners and excess coverages. They also defend commercial lines insureds under comprehensive general liability coverages, in product, premises, environmental, construction, surety and business auto claims, as well as a myriad of the other species of claims which arise in the commercial context. In the mass tort arena, Semmes’ attorneys have served as national coordinating counsel for insurers and insureds in addition to our traditional, local representations. Semmes’ attorneys also maintain a thriving practice representing life, health and disability insurers in the defense of misrepresentation and coverage litigation.

As a natural adjunct to their comprehensive and intensive involvement in insurance defense at the trial level, Semmes’ litigators are frequent participants in appellate proceedings in state and federal appellate courts, contributing to scores of reported opinions establishing critical precedents in all of the underlying substantive areas to which insurance pertains.