Author archives

Before starting his own firm in 2011, Robert Friedman served as head of the Insurance Coverage Practice at Gunster in West Palm Beach, where he founded the firm’s insurance practice in 2006. Before joining Gunster, Friedman worked for seven years in the Insurance Coverage group of Dickstein Shapiro LLP in New York. Prior to that, he served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Naomi Reice Buchwald of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Mr. Friedman graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1998 and at the top of his class at Cornell University in 1995. He is a member of the bar in Florida and New York. He is admitted to practice in the U.S. District Courts for the Southern District of Florida, Middle District of Florida, Northern District of Florida, Southern District of New York, and Eastern District of New York, as well as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Friedman has written extensively about insurance coverage and other legal issues for national and regional publications, including National Underwriter, Business Insurance, Risk & Insurance, Daily Business Review, South Florida Business Journal, and the Harvard Law Record. He has been quoted as an expert on insurance law issues in numerous national and local publications. He has presented seminars on commercial insurance topics to business and legal groups, including the Practicing Law Institute. He also has advised the State of Florida on insurance policy issues. Mr. Friedman has served on the board of directors of the alumni association of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell, as well as the Literacy Coalition of Palm Beach County. He currently serves on the board of the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County.

Join Me For New Insurance Law CLE Programs

Tomorrow I am speaking from 10:30 to noon on a panel with Christine Gudaitis at Ver Ploeg & Marino and Rebecca Appelbaum at Adams & Reese. Our topic is Commercial General Liability Insurance. The program is part of The Seminar Group’s 3rd Annual Insurance in the Construction Industry CLE program, being held at the Hampton Inn & Suites in Miami …

Carefully Review Statute of Limitations for Hurricane Irma Insurance Claims

As we approach the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Irma making landfall on Cudjoe Key on September 10, 2017, it is important to review the law that impacts when an insurance claim (or supplemental claim) must be made for damage caused by Hurricane Irma, and what is the statute of limitations for a lawsuit to be …

Two Wrongs Can Make It Right

There are few things I hate more than seeing a policyholder forfeit coverage. Most of my claims involve close calls, or unsettled or novel areas of the law. Sometimes the claim is the type that is clearly covered, but the insurer refuses to provide coverage because it asserts the policyholder forfeited the coverage due to …

The “Intentional Injury Exclusion” Does Not Mean What Your Insurer Would Like It To Mean

A while back I wrote a series entitled, “Top 10 Commercial Insurance Myths & Misconceptions.” I did not cover the “Intentional Injury Exclusion” in that series, but perhaps I should have. Insurers continue to try to use this exclusion to argue that there is no coverage for injury or damage caused by a policyholder’s “intentional …

Florida Supreme Court Reaffirms Concurrent Cause Doctrine

I have a couple of other cases I want to write about, but it is not often that the Florida Supreme Court hands down an important insurance law decision, so those other cases will have to wait. Yesterday, in Sebo v. American Home Assurance Co., Case No. SC 14-897 (Fla. Dec. 1, 2016), the Florida Supreme Court …

Florida Supreme Court to Decide if Florida 558 Proceeding is a “Suit” Triggering a Duty to Defend

I previously wrote here about Judge Marra’s decision in the Southern District of Florida in Altman Contractors, Inc. v. Crum & Forster Specialty Ins. Co., No. 13-80831-CIV, 2015 WL 3539755, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72466 (S.D. Fla. June 4, 2015). The question in that case was whether a Florida 558 proceeding constitutes a “suit” that …

Severability Clause Saves Coverage For Additional Insureds

It has been a fairly quiet first half of 2016 for insurance law decisions in Florida. Several important cases are pending with Florida appellate courts, and as the weather heats up hopefully some of those decisions will be released. In the meantime, I want to discuss a common general liability insurance clause addressed in a …

Triggering Coverage For Construction Defect Claims in Florida & Potential Coverage Gaps For Florida 558 Proceedings

Triggering an insurer’s duty to defend is an important first step in any insurance coverage claim. Typically, an insurer’s duty to defend is triggered when the insurer receives notice of a lawsuit filed against its policyholder. But disputes can arise when a policyholder is required to respond to a claim that falls short of litigation, …

Florida Comes Full Circle On Injury-In-Fact Trigger

I have written several times on what it means to “trigger” an insurance policy for a long-tail claim (see here, here, and here). Long-tail claims stretch over several years of coverage. Examples are environmental claims, latent bodily injury claims, and many types of construction defect claims. Unlike a single-point-trigger claim, like a car accident or …