Biography

Dave Walker has a diverse practice involving the representation of domestic and international insurers and reinsurers in first-party and third-party general liability and professional liability matters. Dave’s practice in this regard is national in scope and has involved cases ranging from Alaska to Florida and Hawaii to Maine.

Dave’s first-party practice involves losses throughout the United States with respect to complex physical damage and time element issues arising under policies provided to Fortune 1000 companies as well as small to medium-sized commercial insureds. He also has represented both domestic and international insurers in matters arising under homeowners policies, and he has a broad base of knowledge pertaining to the standard ISO first party forms.

Dave has counseled general liability insurers in a wide variety of matters throughout the U.S., with a particular expertise in combined first and third party liability package policies. He has counseled clients in the drafting of policies, in formulating programs, in claims management and counseling, and in litigation throughout the U.S. under a wide variety of manuscript and form wordings. He also has a significant amount of experience in counseling insurers on exposures resulting from sexual abuse claims and in litigation arising out of those claims.

Finally, Dave has extensive experience representing domestic and international insurers in a wide variety of professional liability matters, including the following areas: lawyers’ professional liability; insurance brokers E&O; securities broker/dealer E&O; financial institution E&O, and also fidelity and crime; and real estate agents E&O. He also has made several presentations to professional associations in the United States and England involving third-party professional liability matters.


Experience

Representative cases include:

• Represented numerous Lloyd’s syndicates and European insurers in a complex first-party property matter arising out of the explosion of an aluminum manufacturing facility in Louisiana, with a claimed exposure to those clients well in excess of $300 million;

• Retained by a number of insurers in a complex first-party property matter in Indiana arising out of a fire loss at an electroplating facility, with a claim loss in excess of $25 million;

• Successfully obtained summary judgment in favor of various insurers in a rescission action in Virginia with respect to a lawyers’ professional liability matter;

• Represented a U.K. reinsurer with respect to its exposures under treaties issued to cedants for their financial institutions books, with a particular emphasis on the exposures generated by the corporate scandals that arose in the wake of the Enron and Worldcom disclosures;

• Represented several international insurers in a lawsuit in Oklahoma arising out of a claim for physical damage and time element losses caused by a loss at a coal mine.

Practice Areas

Insurance
Litigation

Courts

Illinois, 1989
U.S. District Court, N.D. Illinois, 1994
Pro hac vice admission to various state and federal courts

Professional and Community Organizations

American Bar Association
Defense Research Institute
Professional Liability Underwriting Society
National Association of Professional Surplus Lines Offices

Education

University of Colorado, Boulder, B.A., with distinction, 1986
University of Illinois, J.D., magna cum laude, 1989; Dean’s List; Harno Fellow