Bill O’Neill’s practice focuses on guiding clients, including insurers, reinsurers and healthcare companies, through complex arbitrations and litigations. He has been recognized as a top insurance and reinsurance attorney in several respected guides. Bill has been involved in hundreds of disputes involving life, health, and property/casualty insurance and reinsurance issues.
He has represented clients in disputes involving yearly renewable term reinsurance premiums, environmental and asbestos reinsurance allocations, “maximum any one life” warranties, extracontractual obligations, sexual abuse claims, fronting arrangements, sunset and commutation clauses, actuarial and agency issues, vanishing premium life insurance policies, cedent insolvencies, long-term care premiums, “follow the fortunes” and “follow the settlements” clauses, late notice, retention warranties, underwriting and claims-handling practices, 9/11 issues, fraud, offset, misrepresentations, recovery of declaratory judgment expenses, and allegations of misconduct by brokers, managing general underwriters and third-party administrators.
These disputes center on many types of underlying exposures and business, including variable annuities, individual life, healthcare, workers’ compensation, long-term care, disability income, accident and health, asbestos, environmental, and construction defects.
In addition to his dispute work, Bill counsels clients regarding business, strategy and regulatory matters.
Representative Matters :
- Represented a cedent in a dispute with its reinsurer over the reinsurer’s challenge to a good-faith settlement relating to the cedent’s billings for losses incurred for the hospitalization of insured critically ill infants.
- Represented a reinsurer in arbitrations over whether it could raise premiums on a book of yearly renewable term life reinsurance.
- Represented a cedent in a dispute over the proper application of a retention warranty clause in a treaty reinsuring a block of disability income business.
- Obtained a multimillion-dollar arbitration award for a cedent after its reinsurer challenged the reasonableness of the cedent’s allocation of an underlying asbestos settlement.
- Represented a reinsurer in a dispute with its retrocessionaire involving the reinsurer’s obligations and ability to increase premiums on a large book of yearly renewable term life reinsurance.
- Worked with a property/casualty reinsurer to create a new template for its self-insured pools reinsurance treaty.
Professional and Community Involvement :
- Member, Education Committee, AIDA Reinsurance and Insurance Arbitration Society (ARIAS-US)
- Former Chair, Excess, Surplus Lines and Reinsurance Committee, Torts and Insurance Practice Section, American Bar Association
- Member, American Health Lawyers Association
EDUCATION :
- Cornell Law School, J.D., 1997
- Towson University, B.S., 1992
BAR ADMISSIONS : District of Columbia, Maryland
Cost
Rate : $$$