Biography: Insurance & Reinsurance

Kevin Coughlin is a founding member and managing partner of Coughlin Duffy LLP. His practice extends to numerous areas, including insurance and reinsurance, toxic torts, products liability, professional liability, directors and officers, financial institutions, construction, antitrust, commercial and corporate litigation, environmental and bad-faith litigation.

He regularly counsels insurers and reinsurers worldwide on a variety of issues relating to commercial insurance and reinsurance. Mr Coughlin also defends insurance companies and reinsurance companies in coverage litigation and arbitrations in numerous jurisdictions throughout the United States and Europe. In the commercial area he represents multinational clients in disputes arising out of commercial transactions, including non-US transactions with implications within the United States. He also counsels non-US companies doing business in the US. Mr Coughlin was a founding member of the insurance services group at McElroy Deutsch & Mulvaney LLP. He was a partner at that firm from 1987 until he resigned in March 2004 to start the firm of Coughlin Duffy LLP.

Recent significant cases include acting as counsel to a major insurer in connection with its insurance issues arising out of the World Trade Center terrorist attack, as well as acting as lead counsel to an insurer in coverage litigation involving pollution at two mines in the western United States and Canada. He recently successfully obtained from the New Jersey Supreme Court a complete reversal of an US$80 million award in a medical malpractice case, the largest such award in state history. Mr Coughlin currently represents a major insurer in coverage litigation involving antitrust claims against a computer-chip manufacturer. He is lead counsel for an insurer in coverage litigation over the largest computer hacking attack on a commercial enterprise. Mr Coughlin acted as lead counsel for 50 foreign insurers in a complex multinational insurance and antitrust dispute arising out of US asbestos litigation. He is also involved in numerous insurance and reinsurance disputes in the US and Europe arising from litigation against financial institutions and accounting firms. In this area he represented German and Swiss reinsurers in an arbitration dispute in Germany with a large German bank over claims arising from a number of US corporate failures. He is actively involved in counselling insurers and reinsurers on claims arising from the sub-prime and liquidity crisis. Mr Coughlin earned his BA from Villanova University in 1977 and his JD from Seton Hall University in 1980.