Horner, Dennis L

Richard Shore, a founding partner of the firm, focuses on developing and implementing creative solutions to help clients overcome company-threatening or otherwise overwhelming losses and liabilities.  In addition to providing strategic advice, Richard’s work involves litigation, alternative dispute resolution, and complex, multi-party settlement negotiations.  He has helped clients recover well in excess of a billion dollars. 

Richard has played a key role in many cutting-edge initiatives, including the first major asbestos non-products coverage case, novel insurance settlement structures, and groundbreaking cases involving the intersection of bankruptcy and insurance issues.  He was involved in various aspects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and blogs on the insurance and other asset recovery aspects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill at oilspillinsurance.blogspot.com.  Richard speaks around the country on insurance topics including the impact of the current financial crisis on insurers and the resulting challenges for policyholders.  He has been quoted on insurance matters by media outlets including USA TODAY, CNNMoney.com, and Business Insurance magazine.  Richard also has written articles on coverage issues that have appeared in a variety of print and electronic publications.  

Richard has represented a broad range of clients, including Fortune 100 corporations; mom-and-pop companies; non-profit entities; business executives; debtors, trustees, creditors’ committees, and future claimants’ representatives in bankruptcy cases; and post-bankruptcy trusts, among others.  He has been involved in a wide range of coverage matters, including mass torts; environmental damage; first-party property damage; oil spill losses; D&O and E&O liability; advertising injury; personal injury; fidelity and crime losses; crop losses; cyber losses; residual value losses; and claims against insurance brokers.  He has substantial experience in domestic and London insurance insolvency matters.  He has been retained as an expert witness on coverage matters and has testified in support of numerous insurance settlements.  He has advised clients facing significant liabilities on global strategies for dealing with these problems.    

Some recent examples: 

• Represented a major automobile leasing company facing substantial residual value losses in a successful effort to bypass its “captive” insurer and pursue its $100-million-plus coverage claim directly against the captive’s reinsurers

• Helped several insulation contracting companies recover several hundred million dollars each in insurance proceeds to pay asbestos claims

• Secured a ruling requiring an insolvent insurer to estimate and pay future tort claims and ultimately settled with the insolvent insurer for more than $30 million

• Negotiated a “three-corner” settlement in which the client sold an agreed payment stream from its insurer to a third-party investor in return for a lump-sum payment to the client in excess of $50 million

• Represented a client in a successful effort to overturn an adverse arbitration ruling on the basis that the arbitrators had exceeded their authority and the arbitration decision was not binding

• Assisted the directors and officers of a telecommunications company in securing payment of insurance proceeds for breach-of-duty and other claims to facilitate an overall settlement of those claims

• Led Gilbert LLP efforts to recover insurance proceeds to fund a client's bankruptcy reorganization plan in a case in which our firm was singled out for praise by the bankruptcy judge at the conclusion of the confirmation hearing

Richard began his legal career in late 1988 as an associate at Covington & Burling LLP and became a partner there in 1995.  He then moved to Dickstein Shapiro LLP as a partner in 1997.  He was one of the founding partners of Gilbert LLP in 2001.