Start in Arbitration, Finish in Court: The Sexual Harassment Plaintiff’s Election to Litigate

Mr. Loree earned his B.A. from New York University in 1986 and his J.D. from Brooklyn Law School in 1989, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Brooklyn Journal of International Law, a Dean's Merit Scholar, and a member of the Dean's List. He is admitted to practice in the State of New York, the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Sixth and Eighth Circuits.

He is a recognized authority on practice and procedure under the Federal Arbitration Act, including matters arising under the New York Convention, and his commentary on arbitration has been quoted by Global Arbitration Review, Business Insurance, and U.S. Law Week. Among his notable appellate matters, he argued Certain Underwriting Members of Lloyds of London v. State of Florida (2d Cir. 2018), in which the Second Circuit set the evident-partiality standard for party-appointed arbitrators, and Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co. v. Home Ins. Co. (6th Cir. 2005), both of which have been widely cited by courts, treatises, and commentators.

Mr. Loree is a prolific author and speaker on reinsurance and arbitration law. He is Editor-in-Chief of The Arbitration Law Forum (formerly the Loree Reinsurance and Arbitration Law Forum) (www.loreelawfirm.com/blog), where he has published more than 375 articles, and his work has appeared in the New York Law Journal, the National Law Journal, Law360, the Texas Tech Law Review, Global Reinsurer, U.S. Insurer, and the the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (“CPR”)’s newsletter, Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation, among others. He has served as a panelist at numerous industry programs, including American Conference Institute forums on reinsurance regulation and disputes. He is, and has been for several years, a regular contributor to arbitration-law analysis on CPR’s YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/@CPRInstituteOnline/videos).

Before forming Loree & Loree in 2008 (which he continued as The Loree Law Firm after the late Philip J. Loree Sr. retired in 2020), Mr. Loree practiced for nearly 17 years with one of the leading reinsurance practice groups in the United States and was a litigation partner at two prominent New York firms, Rosenman & Colin LLP (now Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP) and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP (now Hogan Lovells Cadwalader). As a partner at Cadwalader, he was a member of the four-partner trial team that obtained a $1.1 billion arbitration award for a large Japanese insurance and reinsurance company against Fortress Re, Inc.—reputed at the time to be the largest award in the history of reinsurance arbitration. He was also a partner member of the team that successfully handled the related, more than $1 billion action against Deloitte & Touche, which resulted in what was at the time reputed to be the second-largest settlement of an independent auditor liability case in history.

Mr. Loree has arbitrated or litigated many significant reinsurance-related issues, including statutory and GAAP reinsurance accounting, transfer of risk, fraud and rescission, London Market disputes, insolvencies, follow-the-fortunes and follow-the-settlements, allocation of environmental and asbestos liabilities, trigger of coverage, contract interpretation, utmost good faith, and the liability of intermediaries and brokers. He also has counseled clients on insurance coverage, regulatory compliance, OFAC sanctions, commutations, Bermuda Form policies, risk transfer, and other insurance- or reinsurance-related matters.

He has represented a wide-range of clients in proceedings to enforce arbitration agreements and confirm or vacate arbitration awards, and has counseled clients who were facing arbitration-law-related problems in arbitration or litigation proceedings to which they were parties. He also has represented and counseled clients involved in other types of commercial or contract disputes.