Coverage-in-Place Agreements

SRF lawyers played an instrumental role in creating and negotiating a coverage-in-place (CIP) program with more than a hundred insurance carriers for losses sustained in connection with mammary implant litigation. That CIP program, resulting in nearly a billion dollars of insurance reimbursements, was groundbreaking because not only was it implemented with a minimum of litigation, but it also represented one of the first times that a CIP program resolving both occurrence and claims-made coverage had ever been negotiated.

We were again retained to handle insurance issues in a large-scale loss involving alleged HIV infections from factor concentrate blood products used by hemophilia patients throughout the world. Collaboration with more than one hundred domestic and international insurers resulted in another innovative CIP program. Although designed to have attributes similar to the mammary implant program, this CIP program was based on an entirely different "trigger" theory (single infection date as opposed to continuous injury) and spread the loss among multiple policy years based upon an infection/probability analysis derived from reliable medical research. Thus far, SRF's client has collected more than $300 million in insurance proceeds under the program.

SRF's expertise and experience was called upon once again when another group of hemophilia patients from more than twenty countries initiated a second wave of litigation alleging infection with Hepatitis C and, to a lesser extent, HIV from the same factor concentrate products. SRF attorneys developed a new CIP program based on available medical information to handle processing and payment of these claims, which, as with SRF’s other CIP programs, appears set to achieve nearly unanimous insurer participation.