Profile: William M Sneed

Insurance and Reinsurance

Biography: Insurance & Reinsurance

William M Sneed, a partner in Sidley's Chicago office, has extensive experience arbitrating and litigating international and domestic reinsurance disputes on behalf of ceding companies, reinsurers and receivers. His practice encompasses the property and casualty and life and health areas (including workers' compensation carve-out).

Mr Sneed's general training is as a litigator. He has arbitrated dozens of reinsurance disputes, addressing such issues as allocation of loss payments, aggregation of claims, late notice, ECO/XPL coverage, follow the fortunes, pre-hearing security, cessions of declaratory judgment expenses and retention warranties. He has tried multiple cases (jury and non-jury) in state and federal courts, including civil rights, tort, tax and commercial disputes. He is a member of the federal trial bar of the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, and organised the Chicago Bar Association's trial practice course for several years. He is also admitted to practise before the US Court of Appeals for the First, Second, Third, Seventh and Ninth Circuits, as well as the US Tax Court.

Mr Sneed has published articles respecting insurance and reinsurance issues in various journals. His article on the McCarran-Ferguson Act and insurance insolvency in the Journal of Insurance Regulation won the Spencer L Kimball Award for best article in 2000.

Mr Sneed graduated magna cum laude from Northwestern University School of Law in 1987, where he was a member of the Law Review and the Order of the Coif. He also received an MM from Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of Management in 1987, where he was an Austin Scholar, and an AB in Philosophy from Stanford University in 1983.