Reed Smith partners Luke Sizemore and Andy Muha address challenges posed by mass tort litigation and discuss strategies for permanently resolving mass tort claims through bankruptcy and corporate dissolution. They also analyze the role of insurance recoveries in these strategies. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Hello and welcome to Insured Success, a podcast brought to you by Reed Smith's insurance recovery lawyers from around the globe. In this podcast series, we explore trends, issues, and topics of interest affecting commercial policy holders. If you have any questions about the topics discussed in this podcast, please contact our speakers at insuredsuccess@reedsmith.com. We'll be happy to assist. Andy: Welcome to another episode of the Insured Success podcast. This is Andy Muha, a member of Reed Smith's insurance recovery group in Pittsburgh. And I'm joined today by my colleague Luke Sizemore, also of Pittsburgh, and from our firm's restructuring and insolvency group. Thanks for being here, Luke. Luke: Of course, Andy. I'm happy to be here. Andy: Luke and I are here to discuss an issue that intersects our two practices, insurance recovery and restructuring and insolvency. That is how to develop a permanent solution for the challenge of mass tort litigation. And I think the best way to start would be to talk briefly about the dimensions of the challenge. Mass tort litigation has been a part of the American legal scene for several decades. The term mass torts generally refers to claims for bodily injury arising from exposure to a product or continuously repeated conditions or behavior. Often, they involve a latency element, the period after the conduct that caused the injury, but before the injury manifests itself. And because of that latency period, mass torts typically pose the specter of an unknown number of future claimants. Bodily injury claims for asbestos exposure are the prototypical mass tort, but they also include claims for injury caused by talc, opioid painkillers, silica, defective medical products, and even institutional sexual abuse. Litigation of mass tort claims is expensive. Mass tort claims are typically filed in state courts, which are becoming more unpredictable and more plaintiff-friendly by the day. Claims are often filed in a variety of jurisdictions, and coordination of the defense efforts spread across multiple states adds expense and complexity. Historically, mass tort defendants have sought to cover the costs of both defending mass tort claims and paying for settlements or judgments on those claims by relying on liability insurance, whether in primary, umbrella, or excess policies. But many defendants face a troubling reality. If the mass tort claims at issue continue to be asserted indefinitely, the cost of defending and resolving those claims may exceed the limits of available insurance. That risk often is compounded by the fact that insurers themselves actively seek ways of evading coverage obligations that the policyholder defendant believes to be unassailable. Companies with healthy operating businesses may nevertheless find themselves beset by mass tort claims arising from long-since discontinued operations or from business units that were acquired recently or distantly. And despite a healthy operating business, mass tort problems can cast a pall over the company's overall prospects for growth. And they may be an impediment to strategic mergers, acquisitions, or other types of business combinations that the company may wish to explore. Given that it's typically impossible for a company to predict when the mass tort claims against it may come to a natural ending point, it can be difficult for mass tort defendants to make long-range plans that account for those mass tort liabilities in a realistic and reliable way. So, is it possible to find a permanent solution for mass tort claims in a way that puts a final stop to the financial blood loss those claims so often cause? The answer