Areas of practice
Supporting insurers and industrial companies through their most complex losses
Coverage analysis and claims management for insurers, co-insurers and reinsurers; defence of industrial companies in energy, automotive and construction, in France and abroad.
Lead practice
Insurance
Insurers are at the heart of my practice. I support them in coverage analysis and complex claims, with one standard: a clear, reasoned and defensible position, delivered within the timeframe of claims handling.
- Coverage analysis: scope, exclusions, limits and deductibles, conditions for triggering cover
- International programmes: coordinating local policies, the master policy and the excess and umbrella layers, including DIC / DIL clauses
- Co-insurance and reinsurance: coordination and management between the lead insurer, co-insurers and reinsurers
- FINC clauses: master-policy response where the local policy cannot pay
- Sanctions clauses and regulatory constraints in multi-country programmes
- Managing major claims: coordinating the insured, loss adjusters and foreign counsel, subrogated recoveries
- Liability and personal injury: mass-casualty accidents abroad, regulated professions (notaries, real-estate professionals)
At the heart of every matter
Court Technical Investigations
In a technical loss, the outcome of the dispute is usually decided during the Court Technical Investigations. That is where causes, liability and the assessment of losses are determined.
Under Article 145 of the French Code of Civil Procedure, a party with a legitimate reason may ask the court, before any action on the merits, to appoint a Court Appointed Expert to investigate the causes of a loss and assess the damage. This pre-action procedure is specific to French law and has no direct equivalent in common law systems. Its findings, issued in a report filed with the court, shape the merits proceedings and most settlements.
- 1
Obtain and frame
Interim application for a Court Appointed Expert, choice of the expert and a precisely defined mission.
- 2
Build the technical defence team
Working hand in hand with the insurer and the industrial client’s engineers, supported by independent technical advisers.
- 3
Run the process
Site meetings, written submissions to the Court Appointed Expert, joinder of third parties and follow-up of investigations.
- 4
Use the report
Comments on the draft report, then negotiation or proceedings on the merits.
Industry and energy
Structural failures, production-line incidents, fires, machinery breakdowns: amicable and judicial steps from the moment the incident occurs.
- Major losses on energy structures and production sites
- Industrial and maritime fires
- Production stoppages and business interruption
- Renewable energy: installation and equipment defects
- Supply disputes under international contracts
OEMs and suppliers
Supporting OEMs and tier-1 and tier-2 suppliers in technical disputes. A command of quality processes is decisive in identifying the origin, the cause of a defect, and the resulting allocation of liability.
- National and international recall campaigns
- Analysis of defects in supplied products
- Electric vehicles: risks inherent to batteries
- Recourse actions and claims against liable third parties
- Joint work with technical and legal teams, insurers and their technical advisers
Construction and infrastructure
Disputes between project owners, architects, engineers and contractors, from pre-litigation to trial, with a strong focus on negotiation.
- Collapses and construction-site accidents
- Defects in infrastructure works
- Latent defects appearing long after handover, often resolved by negotiation
- Major projects abroad
Upstream
Advisory and prevention
Anticipating disputes from the moment contracts are drafted.
Drafting and review
Risk mapping, alignment with insurance programmes
Supply, subcontracting, projects
Several legal systems, one strategy
One strategy, whatever the jurisdiction
When a loss is handled simultaneously in France and abroad, each system imposes its own rules. It is essential that positions taken in one jurisdiction do not undermine those defended in another.
Civil law. Interim applications for Court Technical Investigations, Court Appointed Experts, trial on the merits.
English common law. Disclosure, witness statements, expert evidence, mediation.
US common law. Discovery, depositions, class actions, mediation.
Conflicts of laws and jurisdictions, the French blocking statute, the Hague Evidence Convention, recognition (exequatur) and enforcement of foreign judgments, cross-border mediations.