Richard J Geddes

Education

• University of California, Hastings College of the Law, JD, 1974
• LeMoyne College, BA, 1969

Dick is a partner in our Chicago office, and an insurance specialist with over 40 years’ experience representing insurers throughout the US, Europe and Bermuda.

Today, his practice primarily focuses on the Bermuda insurance market, where he maintains strong relationships with many major insurers and reinsurers. Working on their behalf, Dick advises and represents insurers in cases involving massive casualty losses, while providing ongoing policy and endorsement drafting and underwriting advice.

Dick has acted for insurers in many of the highest profile catastrophic casualty events of the past 40 years in the US, UK and Europe. These include the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster, the Exxon Valdez disaster, the Piper Alpha explosions and fire, the Shell Nitro facility explosion, the United Technologies/Pepcon rocket fuel plant explosion in Nevada, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center the Buncefield Depot explosion, and most recently the massive 2015 Samarco tailings dam collapse in Brazil.

Dick has also represented insurers in connection with numerous mass and serial torts, involving asbestos-related personal injury and property damage, pharmaceutical and medical device losses, serial auto products losses involving major car manufacturers, major property damage losses caused by defective agrichem products, large serial losses arising from defective building materials, and the continuing litigation arising from the consequences of the mass sale and distribution of prescription opioid drugs  

Dick has also acted as lead US counsel in numerous London arbitrations involving losses presented to Bermuda form insurers.

He is an award-winning co-author of The Bermuda Form: Interpretation and Dispute Resolution of Excess Liability Insurance, published by Oxford University Press in 2011. A 2d, updated edition was published in February 2018. Dick is also a regular speaker in insurance industry professional organizations, presenting in the US, the United Kingdom, Bermuda and Europe about current and emerging developments in US tort and insurance law.