Biography

Celeste King has extensive experience representing insurers and reinsurers in complex coverage disputes. She has worked with a variety of contracts including treaty and facultative, quota share, excess of loss, retrocessional and clash covers. Celeste advises insurers and reinsurers on a variety of claim types such as latent claims, professional liability, financial institutions, property losses, and most recently, sub-prime mortgage losses. She is experienced with issues involving aggregation and allocation of losses, cedent insolvencies, extra-contractual obligations, letters of credit, net retained lines, wording interpretation, bad faith claims, claims and underwriting audits, and follow the fortunes disputes. She has participated in several reinsurance arbitrations and litigation and also counsels insurers and reinsurers on settlements, buy-backs and commutations.

Celeste is AV-Rated by Martindale-Hubbell and has made several presentations in the U.S. and London on reinsurance issues. Celeste spent 18 years with an AM-Law 200 Chicago firm before becoming a founding member of Walker Wilcox Matousek LLP.

Practice Areas

Reinsurance
Insurance


Presentations

Emerging Trends in Insurance, GE Claims Conference, Chicago, 2006
Mealey’s Fundamentals of Reinsurance Litigation Conference, Boston, 2006
Mealey’s Fundamentals of Insurance Conference, Washington, D.C. 2007
US Reinsurance Arbitrations, Lloyd’s, London, 2008
ABA’s Tort, Trial & Insurance Practice, Section Midyear Program, Phoenix, 2010

Courts

Illinois, 1983
District of Columbia, 1990
U.S. District Court, N.D. Illinois, 1983

Professional and Community Organizations

American Bar Association
ABA Insurance Coverage Litigation Committee
ABA Excess, Surplus Lines and Reinsurance Committee
Reinsurance and Insurance Arbitration Society (ARIAS-U.S.)

Education

Purdue University, B.A., 1980, Phi Beta Kappa; Distinguished Student Award
Loyola University Chicago School of Law J.D., 1983, Member, Law Review