Armed with a college student’s idealistic vision of changing the world for the better, Horkovich wended his way through law school at Fordham University with stints at a New York conservative party senator’s office. After graduation, he worked briefly at the antitrust litigation practice of defense heavyweight Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP, before spending a few years on the legal team of the Air Force.

It was there he got his first taste of contentious trials, in a military court case involving a first lieutenant who had been accused of spying for the Soviet Union. The case pitted his trial team against prominent defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, who later went on to represent O.J. Simpson in the murder of his ex-wife.

Horkovich’s trial team succeeded in the lower trial court but lost on appeal. “It showed me that different judges can have very different perspectives of the very same fact pattern,” he says.

He went on to an accomplished career representing policyholders in insurance litigation, securing some $2 billion in recoveries for asbestos victims in the past decade, along with multimillion-dollar settlements for post-Katrina homeowners who saw their rebuilt homes rotted by defective Chinese drywall.

Horkovich says he sees insurance litigation as less about enforcing a contract than about promoting larger social justice, because of its potential for exacting huge payouts in injury suits directly from the source of liability funding, he says. Through his work in the Chinese drywall multidistrict litigation in federal court in New Orleans, his client, the trustee for the Chinese drywall trust of bankrupt home builder WCI Communities Inc., secured recoveries that helped more than 300 homeowners to rebuild their houses.

Those were homeowners who had already lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina and rebuilt them, only to find that lower-quality drywall imported from Chinese manufacturers in their rebuilt homes had damaged their wires and plumbing, he says.

“When people generally think of insurance, it’s thought of as very boring,” Horkovich says. “But my work involves the transfer of substantial industry funds toward achieving social goals. In any major catastrophe, insurance can and should be a means of helping people.”

As the lead policyholder attorney insurance counsel for the WCI Chinese drywall trust in that case, Horkovich initiated negotiations that involved insurance companies, builders, homeowners and manufacturers, he says.

Settlement negotiations are a major aspect of Horkovich’s litigation work, where defendants consistently challenge his assessments of what his cases are worth, he says. His solution to such settlement roadblocks is to identify specific reasons that insurers reject the claims sought and to persuade a court to rule on those issues, he says.

“One side or the other will lose, and either I amend my view of what my case is worth or the insurer drops one of its arguments against us,” he says. “But ultimately a jury trial is a wonderful way to shake out settlements, because when an insurance company knows it’s going in front of a jury, it will be forced to confront which of its defenses against us are actually legitimate and which aren’t.”

In 2003, Horkovich helped win a $188 million verdict against insurers including Lloyd’s of London, in a win for asbestos injury claimants who had allegedly been exposed to products made by insulation maker Fuller-Austin Insulation Co. The verdict, which followed an unusually long four-month trial, was reversed on appeal, though it ultimately settled for roughly $50 million, to go toward roughly 56,000 asbestos claimants. That settlement added to the $200 million in settlement funds Horkovich had already negotiated with more than a dozen other insurers over the course of the early 2000s.

“A four-month battle with skilled, smart, and tenacious adversaries with a lot of money on the line was a big challenge,” he says. “That case is another example of bringing social justice, because the money is going into the asbestos trust to pay medical claims.”

Corporate attorneys who have worked alongside Horkovich in seeking recoveries from insurers for their own clients laud him as a keen litigator with a knack for simplifying complicated insurance issues.

In the course of a Wisconsin state court suit against American International Group Inc. units, Horkovich helped accomplish the rare feat of convincing a judge to reconsider his own ruling on a trial motion, which had been in favor of certain excess insurer defendants. Horkovich represented The Coca-Cola Co. unit Cleaver-Brooks Inc. in that dispute, in which it was seeking defense coverage for 200,000 asbestos suits.

“Several of the issues there were fairly complex, even for someone who has spent their entire legal career representing clients in insurance coverage disputes,” says Martin McNerney of King & Spalding LLP, who worked alongside Horkovich in that dispute, representing Coca-Cola. “But Bob explains complicated concepts in very straightforward and easy-to-understand terms."

Horkovich grew up in Mastic Beach in Long Island, a village he describes as “mostly potato farms and duck farms.” The first in his family to go to law school, he planted his roots in litigation as a judge-advocate to the base commander in the Air Force, which had granted him a scholarship to pursue undergraduate studies at Fordham University.

Decades later, he is representing California against insurer CNA, as it seeks recoveries for environmental cleanup costs at the Superfund site Stringfellow Acid Pits. He had previously won a $180 million verdict against eight insurers including CNA, but the insurer managed to shake its portion of the verdict, and the case is set for trial in March, he says.

“Bob knows what he’s doing in the courtroom,” says Steve Crane at Berkes Crane Robinson & Seal LLP, who worked against him in the Fuller-Austin case. “He’s passionate about what he does and cares to make the best case for his side.”