Two Dallas-based insurance litigation partners have joined Spencer Fane from Husch Blackwell, the firm recently announced.
Scott L. Davis and David H. Timmins are bolstering Spencer Fane’s national insurance litigation practice, a group the firm has been markedly growing since 2021. That year, Spencer Fane brought on a national team of 10 lawyers. Today, the team has 30 litigators plus another 30 who practice across multiple areas but are affiliated with the insurance litigation group, according to the firm’s announcement.
That growth caught the attention of Davis and Timmins, who said they reached out to Spencer Fane.
“We like their structure, their business model, their geographic footprint, and most of all, their effort to develop a national insurance coverage practice,” Davis told The Texas Lawbook.
Making the leap with them is Tyler J. Scott, who is based in Kansas City.
“We have been excited to join forces with this team not only because of what it means for our
capabilities geographically but also because the combination will foster exponential growth in the services we can provide to our clients in the insurance industry,” said Linda J. Knight, who leads the firm’s Insurance Litigation Market Team.
Davis and Timmins have worked together for nearly three decades; Spencer Fane is the third law firm they will work in together.
The pair met at Gardere Wynne Sewell, where Davis began his career. Timmins started his career at Sewell & Riggs, which was later acquired by Gardere. The lawyers left to Husch Blackwell in 2018, after Gardere merged with Milwaukee-based Foley & Lardner.
Davis and Timmins recently spoke with The Lawbook about their practices and their move to Spencer Fane. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why did you decide it was time to leave Husch Blackwell?
Davis: I don’t know that we decided it was time to leave Husch as much as we wanted the opportunity that we saw presented here at Spencer Fane. Spencer Fane has been working over the last couple of years to grow and develop an insurance coverage practice that’s complimentary of the practice that we have, and we thought it was a better platform and better opportunity for our practice.
Timmins: We enjoyed our time at Husch and we liked our team there. This was an opportunity to join a firm that had an existing insurance coverage practice that was already very strong, and the combination between our group and that group was kind of too appealing to pass up.
What news, developments or trends in law are you particularly keeping an eye on at the moment?
Davis: There are a number of emerging contamination regulations that have been issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this year. In the first quarter of the year, the EPA issued regulations regarding methane, ethylene oxide and [the chemicals referred to as] PFAS. The ripple effect of those regulations on both compliance and on related insurance, with regard to litigation, continues.
Timmins: Scott and I are both tied in pretty heavily to the environmental world, to a lot of environmental insurance coverage work. So we tend to focus a lot on developments in the regulatory landscape. And there’s a ton of litigation, both underlying liability litigation and insurance coverage litigation, relating to the PFAS liabilities, which people describe as the new asbestos. That’s kind of a developing area of the law. The regulations continue to evolve quickly. The disputes over insurance coverage issues are growing, so we expect that to be a continuing area of dispute. I focus a lot on bad faith issues and handle those kinds of cases throughout the country. So I can keep watch on the evolving developments in exposure to bad faith liability and what the different states are doing as far as allowing that kind of liability or restricting it or expanding it. In addition to that, we’ve had a lot of experience over the last few years dealing with Covid business interruption claims. When Covid hit, there were a lot of claims by businesses who said they lost a lot of money as a result of either the shelter-in-place orders or the requirements that things shut down. And so, we’ve been dealing a lot with disputes and lawsuits over those kinds of Covid interruptions claims. Those have largely run their course, although not completely. You still see some lawsuits being filed on that, but that’s been kind of a hot area for the last several years.
Are there any specific cases you’re not involved in that you’re watching with interest?
Timmins: We tend to watch a lot of the natural disaster-type liability cases. In Texas, there are cases that come up whenever the power grid shuts down as a result of the extreme cold events. We are involved in a lot of that stuff, but we also watch developments in other aspects of those cases to see what the potential liabilities look like.
Davis: One case that was recently decided that I’ve been keeping an eye on, although I would have been tangentially involved in some of the aftermath, was the Supreme Court decision in Purdue Pharma. That decision has implications for the kind of work we do where there are mass tort settlements in or related to bankruptcy. How that decision is interpreted and applied in other scenarios, is something that I keep an eye on.
What would you point to as some of the biggest cases that you’ve handled?
Davis: We were intimately involved in the Covid litigation that occurred across the country. In the last couple of years, we’ve represented clients in regard to the Norfolk Southern train wreck. We are actively involved in the resolution of the Hawaii fires claim that occurred on the island of Maui. We were intimately involved in the resolution of the [Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside] Florida collapse claim. Those are just recent examples of well known, publicized occurrences that we have been part of.