Bob Allen’s Resume »
Robert (Bob) D. Allen
Bob Allen founded The Allen Law Group after spending nearly 30 years with top firms. Most recently, Mr. Allen was the Partner-in-Charge of the Dallas, Texas office of Meckler Bulger Tilson Marick & Pearson LLP. Prior to Meckler, he was an International Partner/Principal at Baker McKenzie where he served as the Chair of the Insurance and Reinsurance Disputes Section of its North American Litigation Practice Group. After a clerkship on the Texas Supreme Court, Bob started his career at Vial, Hamilton, Koch & Knox as an Associate and then a Partner.
Bob’s practice is primarily focused in representing parties in trial court and appellate proceedings in insurance coverage and bad faith litigation in Texas and beyond, ranging from standard personal lines coverages to sophisticated corporate/professional policies and reinsurance treaties. Mr. Allen also serves as a mediator, arbitrator, umpire, and expert witness in insurance, bad faith, reinsurance and attorneys fees disputes.
Bob is a Fellow, Regent and Executive Committee member of the American College of Coverage Counsel (ACCC). He has been elected to membership in the International Association of Defense Counsel (IADC) and the Federation of Defense and Corporate Counsel (FDCC) and he is active in DRI. He has been named to Euromoney’s Guide to the World’s Leading Insurance and Reinsurance Attorneys, Best Lawyers in America and in Dallas and he has been a Texas Super Lawyer from its inception. Based on peer review, Martindale Hubbell has designated him with a Preeminent AV rating. He is double Board Certified in Insurance Law and Civil Appellate Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.
Over his 40 year legal career, Bob has litigated several landmark and important insurance law cases. By way of example, in 2002, Bob was retained as national coordinating counsel for auto insurance giant GEICO on credit scoring issues that culminated in a United States Supreme Court victory in GEICO v. Edo, 551 U.S. 47 (2007), a federal Fair Credit Reporting Act case that was litigated through a Portland, Oregon federal court, as well as the Ninth Circuit, before the United State Supreme Court granted GEICO’s Petition for Certiorari and eventually ruled in GEICO’s favor in a unanimous decision.
Bob was lead counsel in the original Texas Supreme Court cases on reimbursement, Texas Association of Counties County Risk Management Pool v. Matagorda County, 52 S.W.3d 128 (Tex. 2001) and the dual employer doctrine for workers compensation, Garza v. Exel Logistics, 161 S.W.3d 473 (Tex. 2005). He successfully represented the insurer in a case resulting in the first published opinion under Texas law involving advertising injury coverage, Sentry Ins. Co. .v R.J. Weber Co., Inc., 2 F.3d 554 (5th Cir. 1993).
Bob was also lead courtroom counsel for the Kemper companies in the Celanese Texas environmental coverage litigation. Working with Kemper’s national litigation counsel, Bob’s team obtained two late notice partial summary judgments that eliminated over $100 million in potential exposure.
Another example of Bob’s complex insurance litigation experience was as lead counsel for St. Paul/Travelers in three coverage/bad faith lawsuits in Texas, New Mexico and Alabama brought by HealthSouth and an excess insurer concerning hundreds of nursing home claims over multiple years against a HealthSouth subsidiary. This litigation was complicated by two run-away Texas jury verdicts against the HealthSouth subsidiary handed down in consecutive weeks; one for $77 million and the other for $312 million. The litigation with HealthSouth was settled with no extracontractual payment and the St. Paul/Travelers companies obtained a complete summary judgment on the claims asserted against it by the excess carrier.
In coverage litigation over a mass tort action, Bob represented CGL carrier Lamorak as a successor in interest to One Beacon in coverage litigation in the Southern District of New York involving seven years of potential coverage to one of the major commercial remediation companies involved in the clean-up of almost 100 buildings in the one-mile circumference surrounding Ground Zero post 9-11. The court’s ruling that Texas law applied on the policies pollution exclusion clauses shifted the focus from the insured’s CGL coverage to its Contractors Pollution Liability coverage resulting in a favorable settlement for Lamorak.
Recently, Bob has been involved in some of the largest and most important Directors and Officers insurance coverage tower cases in Texas. For example, Zale Corp. v. Berkley Ins. Co., 2020 WL 4361942 (Tex. App.—Dallas 2020 pet. denied), held that Delaware Securities Appraisal actions do not constitute a wrongful act and in so doing, halted a major D&O insurance litigation floodgate from opening. Also, the currently pending Cobalt Int’l Energy, Inc. v. Illinois Nat’l Ins. Co. spawned the landmark Texas Supreme Court mandamus ruling of In re Illinois Nat’l Ins. Co., 2024 WL 736751 (Tex. 2024) regarding the requirement, totally unique to Texas, that a liability insurer’s exposure to damages and liability assessed against an insured, even upon a wrongful denial of coverage, must be determined by an actual and adversarial trial. Bob is also involved in D&O and other professional liability coverage cases that are governed by arbitration clauses.
Versatile in all types of litigation proceedings, Bob has tried over 20 cases in state and federal (including bankruptcy) courts. For example, Bob led a team of lawyers to victory in a three-week jury trial for St. Paul Re in connection with its litigation against a Managing General Agency. The unanimous jury awarded St. Paul Re over $1 million in damages for breach of contract, promissory estoppel and fraud, while pouring out the Managing General Agency on its $7 million counterclaim. The legal publication The Texas Lawyer recognized this result as the number two insurance litigation verdict of 2011. Shortly after making his closing argument, while the jury was deliberating, Bob hopped a flight to New Orleans to argue the Simmons v. Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Co. case to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which likewise ruled in his client’s favor.
In his small firm setting, free of most conflicts of interest, Bob is able to handle assignments not conducive for a law firm practice. In this regard, Bob is regularly retained as an expert witness (on attorneys fees, bad faith and coverage issues), as local counsel, and as coverage co-counsel working with other firms on significant litigation matters. He is retained as outside coverage counsel to AmLaw 50 law firms with respect to risks including potential mergers, employee fraud and errors and omissions claims. When panel firms are not able to handle insurer vs. insurer matters due to conflicts of interest, Bob is regularly retained by insurers to handle those disputes.
The publication Who’s Who Legal described Bob as an “excellent coverage lawyer who has worked on extraordinarily large cases” and that “Allen emerges as one of the most prominent individuals in the state and is well regarded for big insurance fights.” Bob has defended insurance companies in high states litigation brought by legendary Texas plaintiff’s attorneys including Joe Jamail, John O’Quinn, Ron Krist, Guy Allison, Rusty McMains, Harold Nix, Cary Patterson, and many others. He is able to effectively deal with the bar’s most aggressive attorneys. He prides himself on staying under control and focused in the most intense and confrontational situations.