Trial Lawyer, Bennett Legal
Charles Bennett is the driving force behind Bennett Legal, a nationally recognized law firm specializing in winning Personal Injury cases. He is one of the nation’s top trial attorneys and consultants. He is invited to speak and teach nationwide, educating lawyers on tactics, tips, and procedures that empower them to take on the insurance companies and get significantly improved results. Charles has secured record-breaking results in a variety of categories, including: commercial/18-wheeler crashes, wrongful deaths with a specialty in negligent landlord cases, traumatic brain damage cases, motor vehicle crashes, and workplace injuries.
Charles is highly regarded among his peers as a top lawyer in his field. Whenever other trial lawyers face complex cases and need guidance, they turn to Charles Bennett for his expert advice. He has gained extensive knowledge and experience as a principal of Trial Structure LLC, an educational corporation that catered specifically to trial lawyers. He worked on thousands of cases with a diverse range of lawyers across the nation. He is known as the “lawyer’s lawyer” because of his reputation for trial skills and collaberation. Lawyers often partner with him on their difficult cases to maximize the results.
Charles is now the captain of the Justice College, an institution whose mission is to empower lawyers to face billion-dollar insurance companies without feeling overwhelmed. Charles and the instructors at the Justice College form a special forces unit of trial excellence capable of defeating any insurance team they face. The Justice College graduates become lifelong members of a tribe that share experiences to help the community stay at the top of their game and increase case value.
Charles is a cum laude graduate of SMU Dedman School of Law. Before pursuing law, he had an outstanding career as a college basketball player at Midwestern State University, where he exhibited excellent leadership skills and athleticism. He played professional basketball in Europe. Playing at the professional level necessitates an incredible work ethic, the ability to cooperate and work as a team, and competitiveness that he now applies in the courtroom with spectacular success.
During law school, Charles’s amazed everyone with his initiative and capability by obtaining international arbitration awards for professional basketball players and agents. Recognized as a member of The National Trial Lawyers Top 40 Under 40 and nominated as a Rising Star by Thomson Reuters, Charles’s legal acumen and commitment to excellence make him your best choice when you can’t afford to lose.
He and the Bennett Legal team actively engage in charitable events, reflecting their commitment to giving back and building meaningful connections within their local communities.
Partner, The Loree Law Firm
Philip J. Loree Jr. is the principal of The Loree Law Firm. He has 30 years of experience representing clients in complex disputes before federal and state trial and appellate courts, and arbitration panels, particularly in domestic and international arbitration-law, reinsurance, insurance, and other business and commercial disputes.
Before forming Loree & Loree in 2008 he 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 City law firms, Rosenman & Colin LLP (now Katten-Muchin Rosenman LLP) and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP. When Philip J. Loree Sr. retired from the practice of law in 2020, Philip J. Loree Jr. (“Mr. Loree” or “Loree”) continued the practice of Loree & Loree as The Loree Law Firm.
Mr. Loree has extensive experience arbitrating and litigating matters involving nearly every significant, reinsurance-related issue, including statutory and GAAP reinsurance accounting; transfer of insurance risk; independent auditor liability; fraud and rescission; London Market disputes; pool administration; insolvencies; follow-the- fortunes and follow-the-settlements; allocation of environmental liability and asbestos settlements; number of occurrences; trigger of coverage; multi-year policy issues; interpretation of reinsurance contracts and insurance policies; underwriting practices; reserving; set off; late notice; pre-hearing and pre-answer security; utmost good faith; bad faith; allocation and recovery of declaratory judgment expenses; and liability of intermediaries, managing general agents and brokers. He has also handled coverage litigation. He has counseled clients in contentious and non-contentious matters involving insurance coverage; regulatory compliance; Office of Foreign Asset Control (“OFAC”) sanctions; reinsurance or insurance coverage for hurricane or storm damage; commutations; internal reinsurance reviews; contract and policy interpretation; Bermuda Form polices; property insurance, including insurance of a major oil rig; life reinsurance; life settlements; risk transfer; and other issues.
He has also represented and counseled clients in arbitration and litigation concerning commercial and business contracts, business torts, and fraudulent transfers.
As a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP he played key roles in a number of high-profile matters. He was a member of the four-partner trial team that obtained a $1.1 billion arbitration award in favor of a large, Japanese insurance and reinsurance company against Fortress Re, Inc., the manager of what was once one of the world’s largest aviation reinsurance pools. The arbitration concerned, among other things, Fortress Re’s accounting and reporting practices for financial reinsurance, and the $1.1 billion award is reputed to be the largest in the history of reinsurance arbitration.
He was also a key member of the team that represented the same Japanese insurance and reinsurance company in the related action it brought against Deloitte & Touche, LLP, the independent auditor of the Fortress Re Pool, seeking more than $1 billion in damages. That matter resulted in what was at the time reputed to be the second largest settlement of an independent auditor liability case in history. He and his former partners also represented a large, international reinsurance company in an internal review of finite reinsurance transactions that resulted in a restatement of earnings.
Mr. Loree also has extensive experience and expertise in practice and procedure under the Federal Arbitration Act, including matters arising under the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, and is a recognized commentator on U.S. arbitration-law matters. He has represented clients in numerous proceedings involving the enforcement of arbitration agreements and the confirmation and vacatur of arbitration awards arising out of industry, commercial, business contract, employment, and trust arbitrations.
He argued Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co. v. Home Ins. Co., 429 F.3d 640 (6th Cir. 2005), which rejected an evident partiality and excess of powers challenge to a favorable award he helped his client obtain. Considering for the first time what legal standard should apply to an evident partiality challenge based on a party-appointed arbitrator’s alleged failure to disclose purported conflicts of interest, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected the challenging party’s argument that the district court applied the wrong standard. Courts, treatises and commentators have cited Nationwide extensively.
As a Loree & Loree partner he obtained on behalf of an English client partial vacatur of a reinsurance arbitration award in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The final award provided that the arbitration panel would remain constituted until the parties agreed that it should disband. When the arbitration panel would not disband after resolving all issues the parties submitted to it, his client petitioned the Court for an order vacating the retention-of-jurisdiction provision and confirming all other aspects of the award. He successfully convinced the Court to grant the petition in its entirety and hold that the retention-of-jurisdiction provision exceeded the arbitrators’ authority under Section 10(a)(4) of the Federal Arbitration Act. See KX Re Co. v. General Reinsurance Corp., 08 Civ. 7807 (SAS), 2008 WL 4904882 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 14, 2008).
Loree argued on behalf of the prevailing party Certain Underwriting Members of Lloyds of London v. State of Florida, Department of Financial Services, 892 F.3d 501, 503-04 (2d Cir. 2018) in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that “a party seeking to vacate an award under Section 10(a)(2) must sustain a higher burden to prove evident partiality on the part of an arbitrator who is appointed by a party and who is expected to espouse the view or perspective of the appointing party.” Id. “An undisclosed relationship between a party and its party- appointed arbitrator constitutes evident partiality, such that vacatur of the award is appropriate if[,]” explained the Court: “(1) the relationship violates the contractual requirement of disinterestedness [or another contractual requirement of the arbitration agreement]; or (2) it prejudicially affects the award.” 892 F.3d at 504 (citations omitted). (Read more about the case here.)
Loree is a prolific and skilled writer. He has written extensively on reinsurance and arbitration-related matters, and is the editor-in-chief of the Arbitration Law Forum (formerly the Loree Reinsurance and Arbitration Law Forum) (http://www.LoreeLawFirm.com/blog), which regularly posts online articles of interest concerning reinsurance and commercial and industry arbitration. In addition to the more than 300 articles he has published in The Arbitration Law Forum (and in its predecessor, the Loree Reinsurance and Arbitration Law Forum), he has written articles published in the New York Law Journal, the National Law Journal, U.S. Insurer, Global Reinsurer, and other publications, as well as several articles for Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation, the newsletter of the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (“CPR”).
Mr. Loree’s publications include:
CPR conducted in 2020 several video conference interviews of Loree, and his friend, former trial judge, and fellow arbitration-law practitioner, Richard D. Faulkner, about various controversial arbitration issues pertaining to matters the U.S. Supreme Court either has been asked to hear. Links to those videos can be accessed here.
Mr. Loree’s speaking engagements include:
The Loree Law Firm’s predecessor practice, Loree & Loree, was selected by Expertise.com out of a group of 1,763 persons or firms reviewed as one of Expertise.com’s top 18 “Arbitrators & Mediators” in New York City for 2019, and now for 2020. (See here and here.)
His comments on arbitration matters have been quoted by Global Arbitration Review, a London-based trade publication that covers international arbitration; Business Insurance, and U.S. Law Week.
Loree obtained his B.A. from New York University in 1986 and his J.D. from Brooklyn Law School in 1989, where he was the 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, and in the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, and the United States Courts of Appeals for the Second, Sixth, and Eighth Circuits.
Partner, Horvitz & Levy LLP
Jeremy Rosen is nationally renowned for his proficiency in numerous issues arising under the First Amendment and California’s anti-SLAPP law. Using that knowledge, Jeremy has helped a wide variety of clients – including churches, private businesses, and individuals – defeat lawsuits that seek to impose liability on clients for exercising their rights of petition, free speech, and free exercise of religion. He has also handled hundreds of appeals in numerous appellate courts, including the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the California Supreme Court, and California’s intermediate appellate courts. In addition to First Amendment and anti-SLAPP cases, his cases have involved numerous important issues regarding anti-trust, class actions, wage and hour law, employment law, breach of contract, California’s Unfair Competition Law, CEQA, the enforceability of arbitration clauses, hospital peer review, the scope of public employee whistleblower protection, and the application of the primary assumption of risk doctrine.
Jeremy is a partner at the firm, which he joined in 2001. He is a California State Bar Certified Appellate Specialist and a member of the California Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
Jeremy directed the Pepperdine University School of Law Ninth Circuit Appellate Advocacy Clinic for 6 years. The Clinic represents individuals in the Ninth Circuit who are identified by the court as needing pro bono counsel. Jeremy also previously served a three-year term where he was appointed by the Ninth Circuit to serve as one of 18 appellate lawyer representatives to the court.
Jeremy is a member of the National Chamber Litigation Center’s California Litigation Advisory Committee. Before joining the firm, Jeremy was a Litigation Associate with Munger, Tolles & Olson.
Partner, Horvitz & Levy LLC
Felix Shafir is a partner at the firm. He has argued appeals in the California Supreme Court and the California Courts of Appeal, and has been lead and amicus counsel in numerous proceedings in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Mr. Shafir focuses his practice on two areas at the cutting edge of California law: (1) the law of protected speech, including the First Amendment, defamation, California’s anti-SLAPP statute, and the litigation privilege; and (2) the defense of class and representative actions, often through resisting class certification efforts or the enforcement of arbitration agreements. He has also developed unique expertise in handling appeals involving employment disputes and employer liability, commercial litigation, intellectual property, environmental litigation, unfair competition lawsuits, and federal and state securities issues.
Mr. Shafir often works with clients and trial counsel before an appeal begins, advising them to preserve issues and present evidence in the best posture for appeal. He also prepares amicus briefs seeking to move or clarify the law in ways favorable to his clients and their members.
Mr. Shafir has represented many significant companies and organizations, including American Medical Response, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America, Omega S.A., See’s Candy Shops, Shell Oil Company, and the Southern California Gas Company.
Mr. Shafir is a past member of the California State Bar Committee on Appellate Courts and the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s State Appellate Judicial Evaluation Committee.
In 2013, 2014, and 2016, the Los Angeles & San Francisco Daily Journal honored Mr. Shafir by naming him to its list of California’s “Top Labor and Employment Lawyers.” He was also named a Rising Star by California Super Lawyers from 2007 to 2014.
Before joining the firm, Mr. Shafir held judicial clerkships with the Honorable Thomas J. Meskill, U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, and the Honorable Whitman Knapp, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. Mr. Shafir previously practiced at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw LLP and Littler Mendelson, P.C., where he focused on all aspects of labor and employment defense and counseling.
Northwestern University School of Law, J.D., cum laude, 1999
University of California, Los Angeles, B.A., cum laude, 1996
Stefan Marculewicz is a Shareholder in the Washington, DC office of Littler Mendelson, P.C., and focuses his legal practice on traditional labor law matters, international labor law and standards, and non-traditional worker representation.
Jennifer Thomas is an Associate in the Washington, DC office of Littler Mendelson, P.C. where she concentrates her practice in the areas of labor and employment law.
Recent Supreme Court Decisions: Implications for the Business World
Charles Bennett, Philip J. Loree
The U.S. Supreme Court continues to shape arbitration law through a strict interpretation of the...
Helping Americans to Speak Freely
Jeremy B. Rosen, Felix Shafir
Note from the Editor: This article discusses different types of state anti-SLAPP laws and argues that...
Labor Organizations by Another Name: The Worker Center Movement and its Evolution into Coverage under the NLRA and LMRDA
Stefan J. Marculewicz, Jennifer Thomas
I. Introduction The labor union, the primary collective advocate for workers’ rights in the United...