Mary Craig Calkins

Litigators are out front in the courtroom, but offstage insurance recovery lawyers like Calkins are a critical key to virtually every significant case. The Kilpatrick Townsend partner has more than 30 years of experience representing policyholders in insurance coverage disputes involving directors and officers’ liability, entertainment and media, intellectual property, cybersecurity, employment practices and other practice areas.

“I’m behind the curtain addressing the insurance issues while other lawyers are defending the underlying cases in court,” she said. Her work helps fund high-stakes cases in the U.S. and internationally, including disputes implicating the laws of Brazil, Chad, Chile, Germany, Jordan, Malta, Syria, Turkey and the U.K.

Under Calkins’ leadership, her West Coast team has helped clients recover hundreds of millions of dollars through the negotiation, litigation, trial and arbitration of complex insurance coverage disputes. In 2017, the team brought in more than $125 million in insurer contributions to settlements and defense fees.

In one high-profile matter involving shareholder derivative claims arising from the July 2016 sexual harassment headlines involving Fox News — a highly charged forerunner to the #MeToo movement that cost the now-deceased news chief Roger Ailes and anchor Gretchen Carlson their jobs — Calkins as coverage counsel handled the insurance issues for almost 70 separate lawsuits and claims. The $90 million settlement, rolled into one case in Delaware, was funded entirely by insurance.

“The settlement infused almost $70 million back into the company from its insurers to pay for the defense,” Calkins said. City of Monroe Employees’ Retirement System, derivatively on behalf of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. v. Murdoch et al. and Twenty-First Century Fox Inc., 2017-0833-AGB (Del. Chance. Ct., filed Nov. 20, 2017).

Beyond her work for clients, Calkins will be managing director of the American Bar Association Section of Litigation for 2018-2019. In that role she will oversee the activities of more than 300 section leaders including the 2018 Professional Success Summit in Houston, an event focused on networking and the advancement of racially and ethnically diverse litigators and other national events.

She is also immediate past president of the American College of Coverage and Extracontractual Counsel, an honorary organization of about 300 top insurance coverage lawyers from the U.S. and Canada.

Does she ever stop to take a breath? “I plan good vacations away from the telephone,” she said. “Next September, it will be Italy, although in Europe they can always catch you. On balance, it’s better to be online so you don’t come home to 600 messages.”

— John Roemer