Asbestos, environmental, and mass tort.

Long-tail claims that surface decades after the policies were written and run through many years and layers of coverage. Mr. Bingham has worked these claims from a carrier’s home office, from inside the industry’s asbestos settlement facility, and as a testifying expert.

About this practice area

How these claims differ.

Asbestos, environmental, and mass tort claims are long-tail exposures. The injury or contamination often comes to light years or decades after the policies were issued, so a single claim can reach many policy periods, several carriers, and both primary and excess layers, and then pass on to those carriers’ reinsurers.

Disputes turn on which policies are triggered, how losses are allocated across years and layers, how defense and remediation costs are apportioned, whether reserves were adequate, and whether notice was timely, including notice to reinsurers. Because these books are large and run for decades, how a carrier organizes, reserves, and documents them is often the question in the case.

Reinsurance disputes over these claims are also described under Reinsurance Disputes. Reserve reviews of claim books are under Reserve adequacy studies.

A bathtub drawn as a coverage chart: a column for each policy year, losses from the faucet filling the primary layer across every year before the water rises into the excess layers, labeled horizontal exhaustion

Background

He built the operations that handle these claims.

Before serving as an expert, Mr. Bingham designed and ran claim operations at the center of the asbestos, environmental, and mass tort era.

National centralization of a carrier’s long-tail claims

Designed and operationalized a national claims operation to remove CNA’s environmental, asbestos, and toxic tort claims from its 37 field offices and centralize them in its home office. The project involved relocating tens of thousands of claim files, setting proper and adequate reserves, and drafting claim policy & procedure manuals. Mr. Bingham was critically involved in the Fibreboard case. Environmental claims included Stringfellow and Rocky Mountain Arsenal; mass torts included breast implants and AIDS-tainted blood products.

Center for Claims Resolution and the Asbestos Claims Facility

As a partner at Peterson Consulting, Mr. Bingham worked on the team that operated the Center for Claims Resolution and its predecessor, the Asbestos Claims Facility. The Center operationalized the Wellington Agreement, including the settlement of claims and the allocation of payments among the participants.

Policyholder Allocation System (PAS)

Helped develop Peterson’s proprietary Policyholder Allocation System. The platform mapped claim presentations against CERCLA information and modeled payments horizontally and vertically across the towers of coverage for potentially responsible parties (PRPs).

Matters and programs

Named matters and programs from this work.

FibreboardStringfellowRocky Mountain ArsenalWellington AgreementBreast implantsTainted blood productsCERCLA / PRPs

Engagements

Matters handled.

Expert work on asbestos and environmental claims for carriers and cedents: claim cessions to reinsurers, reserving, coverage triggers, and allocation.

Testifying expert · Report, Deposition

Facultative reinsurance dispute over asbestos claim cessions

40,000+page record

70-pagereport in under 5 weeks

80-pagerebuttal report

Asbestos claims · Reinsurance disputes

Environmental claim book: reserves, coverage triggers, and allocation

Reservesadequacy of the book

Triggerscoverage and allocation

Costsdefense and remediation

Environmental claims · Carrier claims reviews