NEW YORK—May 2, 2022—Cohen Ziffer Frenchman & McKenna LLP is pleased to announce that managing partner Kenneth Frenchman and partner Meredith Elkins have been recognized as 2022 Plaintiffs’ Attorneys Trailblazers by The National Law Journal. They are two of 50 individuals honored nationally in this year’s report.
Over the course of Frenchman’s career, he has represented major policyholder plaintiff clients in their highest-stakes disputes with recalcitrant insurers, securing more than $3 billion in cumulative recoveries to help them rebuild after being struck by disaster. In January 2021, Frenchman argued before the New Jersey Supreme Court in one of the largest insurance actions to arise from losses in Hurricane Sandy for the New Jersey Transit Corporation. Frenchman won a unanimous ruling from the Court, awarding New Jersey Transit access to its full $400 million policy limit. Most recently, Frenchman first-chaired a trial for PES Holdings, the owner of an oil refinery destroyed in an explosion, against its carriers; the case settled favorably three days into the scheduled two-week trial. Frenchman has also been at the forefront of litigation efforts to recover COVID-19 business interruption losses from insurers. He won a first-of-its-kind ruling for a landlord that owns retail locations in global cities holding that exclusionary language common to many insurance policies did not bar coverage.
Elkins is particularly skilled in insurance disputes and has secured landmark rulings for policyholders that address previously unresolved questions of law. She regularly litigates high-stakes insurance matters in federal and state courts across the country, frequently appearing before courts in New York, Texas, and Delaware. Elkins has secured several groundbreaking victories, including a $24 million win for Verizon clarifying what qualifies as a “securities claim” under directors & officers insurance policies that commonly protect senior executives—a previously unresolved question of insurance law. Elkins also advises clients seeking insurance coverage in the recent surge of COVID-related business interruption cases. She was part of an all-women team that secured an against-the-grain ruling allowing a pandemic-related insurance coverage case brought by policyholder JDS Construction Group, LLC to move forward. Elkins also serves as hiring partner of Cohen Ziffer, which launched in January 2021 with 12 lawyers and has already more than doubled in size.
Read Frenchman and Elkins’ Trailblazers profiles here – pages 4-5.
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