Amber S. Finch 

As an attorney for policyholders suing commercial insurance companies seeking coverage for losses, Amber S. Finch has what she describes as a niche practice.

She also reviews policies for clients, advises them on their risk management strategies and helps them tender claims for any losses.

Finch said she likes the practice because it is very academic. “It allows me to really flex those muscles and do some gymnastics with my brain,” she said. In addition, “It feels really good being on this side of the fence. … I can sleep at night.”

While she calls it a niche practice, some of her current cases deal with several important issues of the day, including the opioid crisis, the pandemic, climate change and the war in Ukraine.

“It’s a niche practice with a broad variety, which also makes it exciting,” Finch said. “We see something new all the time.”

For instance, she is co-lead counsel for one of the major drug distributors seeking coverage for the thousands of claims against it growing out of the nationwide opioid epidemic. The litigation has been active in another state for years. But recently, one insurance carrier filed a duplicative action in California. Finch and her team won a stay of that lawsuit, which was upheld on appeal.

“It’s one of those cases that has a lot of tentacles, and I’m very excited about being on the team because the issues are so front and center … and of widespread interest to business,” she said.

Like many insurance lawyers, she also has represented companies in the hospitality industry making business interruption claims from the COVID-19 pandemic. She and her team have had good success so far in one matter pending in Nevada on behalf of a major restaurant group.

Those pandemic cases were a big part of her docket in 2020 and 2021, but they haven’t been easy. She and her team of young women lawyers sometimes feel like David fighting Goliaths, she said. “Every win is important and staying alive is significant,” she said. “We are not making it easy for the other side.”

Along with Reed & Smith lawyers in Texas, Finch is representing a Samsung company that manufactures microchips suing in a new lawsuit against its insurance company for coverage of more than $300 million in losses caused by the big “Texas Freeze” of February 2021. The giant storm caused an estimated $2 billion in damage across the state. Samsung Austin Semiconductor LLC v. Factory Mutual Insurance Company, 1:23-cv-00114 (W.D. Tex., filed Feb. 6. 2023).

And beginning late last year, Finch has filed three lawsuits in California against groups of insurers on behalf of companies that leased aircraft to Russian airlines. The leasing companies claim the planes are now total losses because the Russian government won’t let them return to the U.S. during the Ukraine war. One client is seeking more than $1 billion in damages.

She and her team are handling matters “at the forefront of what the law looks like in the coverage space,” Finch said. “It is exciting to be a part of.”

— Don DeBenedictis