Anderson Kill & Olick PC’s insurance recovery attorneys compelled insurers to cough up coverage for the Stringfellow Acid Pits Superfund cleanup and helped to create Ohio law surrounding insurance coverage for retail computer hacking incidents, landing the firm a spot among Law360’s Insurance Practice Groups of the Year.

Anderson Kill solely represents policyholders in a practice that dispatches more than 60 attorneys to represent diverse clients like the state of California, the United Nations, and major asbestos trusts including the Owens Corning and Asarco trusts. The year 2012 cemented the firm's reputation as an insurance industry heavy hitter after it secured wins for California, shoe retailer DSW Inc., engineering equipment manufacturer Alfa Laval Inc. and others.

“What makes Anderson Kill different is the energy we put forth in representing policyholders — we push the envelope, and that creates an excitement here that is unmatched at other firms,” group chair Robert Horkovich told Law360. “We have a common interest in getting recovery for policyholders, and a real fervor in obtaining money so major clients can help clean up the environment, or getting money for trusts in asbestos cases so people can pay for their medical treatment.”

The state of California called on Anderson Kill's fervor and expertise to force six excess insurers to cover their share of an estimated $700 million federal court-ordered cleanup of the Stringfellow Acid Pits industrial waste site, which the state designed and operated from the 1950s to the 1970s.

In August, the California Supreme Court handed a huge victory to the state and to policyholders when it ruled that insureds facing long-term property damage and personal injury claims can force a carrier to cover damage occurring outside its policy period and to "stack" coverage limits from policies spanning multiple years to maximize recovery.

The state Supreme Court concluded that the "all sums" language in California's excess policies made it clear that the carriers had to cover all damage up to their policy limits, even those damages that occurred before or after the period their policy was in effect.

Moreover, the absence of anti-stacking provisions in the policies allows California to recover up to the coverage limits of all policies covering the pollution, the California Supreme Court held.

Horkovich said the firm was honored to represent California and obtain a decision that measures up favorably against similar rulings in Pennsylvania, Oregon, Ohio and other states.

“A lot of states look up to California for guidance, so the state decision was hopefully a huge benefit to policyholders across the country,” Horkovich said.

So far, California has obtained $160 million in cleanup money, but Horkovich called the process “challenging,” saying the insurance industry fought every step of the way and continues to fight as California seeks to obtain remaining cleanup money.

And in November, Anderson Kill scored a win for Swedish engineering equipment manufacturer Alfa Laval Inc. in its fight to compel Travelers Casualty and Surety Co. to defend the company against asbestos claims.

Travelers had argued it had a duty to defend the underlying asbestos claims only on a pro rata “time on the risk” basis shared among Travelers and Alfa Laval's other insurers, but a New York appeals court said that Travelers, Alfa Laval's longest standing insurer, should provide a complete defense and may seek contribution later.

“The result means that under New York law, when you present a liability insurance case for defense, you're supposed to get a complete defense, which on one level sounds obvious, but on another level is what the insurance company was trying not to do,” group co-chair Bill Passannante told Law360.

Also in August, Anderson Kill scored a major victory for DSW unit Retail Ventures Inc. in a Sixth Circuit decision that ordered an AIG unit to pay more than $7 million to cover an insurance claim stemming from a 2005 hacker attack that snatched debit and credit card numbers from about 1.4 million clients.

The Sixth Circuit upheld an Ohio district court’s 2010 opinion that found Retail Ventures was covered under the computer fraud rider of its blanket crime policy with AIG unit National Union Fire Insurance Co. of Pittsburgh, Pa., rejecting AIG's argument that an exclusion stating the policy did not apply to the loss of “proprietary information, trade secrets, confidential processing methods or other confidential information of any kind” barred AIG coverage.

The appellate court said stored data consisting of credit card and checking account information does not fall under any of those categories.

“AIG ended up taking their own language and putting drastically different words in there to describe what existed,” Joshua Gold, a shareholder who led the representation, told Law360. “When they did that, we were fairly certain they were straining the terms of the policy to get what they wanted, and that's good for us as policyholders, when it appears the insurance company seems to be walking away from its own language.”

Gold said Anderson Kill needed to adopt a cutting-edge approach in that litigation, because the firm hadn't found Ohio case law analyzing the specific provisions in question and knew it was establishing law concerning the state's computer hacking coverage and crime insurance policies.

Passannante said Anderson Kill's dedication to pursuing novel insurance litigation, combined with its refusal to represent insurance companies, has allowed the firm to focus its practice in a manner that keeps the victories, and clients, coming.

“We have so many people doing insurance recovery that we have experts on niches and subniches,” Passannante said. “However you want to slice it, we have people who have seen your insurance problem against your insurance company, and that's unique.”