Gowling WLG

Dispute Resolution; Insurance; Advocacy; Professional Liability

Partner, UK Head of Insurance and W&I

With Samantha's knowledge, skills and connections in the market, she has managed to push boundaries by negotiating greater and better cover than market standards.

Samantha Holland is a commercial litigator with an insurance background who works with clients to mitigate risk and minimise loss to their business. She does this by resolving policy coverage disputes as cost-effectively and as quickly as possible and by negotiating clear and effective policy wordings so that disputes can be avoided in the first place.

Having been embedded in the transactional insurance market for over 13 years, Samantha's industry-knowledge and willingness to innovate means that she is ideally placed to advise clients on the use of insurance to clear potential deadlocks to a corporate or real estate transaction. Her litigation experience and ability to analyse risk allows her to stress test the cover; driving the most value from the deal for her client. She has particular experience of negotiating complex title insurance policies; market-leading construction and environmental insurance programmes; and of using warranty and indemnity insurance to provide buy-side cover for breaches of warranties in a sale and purchase agreement where there is limited or no seller recourse.

Working on a "no win no fee" basis, Samantha secured a favourable settlement for a client in a politically charged claim for sums due under an agreement to manage certain council-owned car parks in which the council sought rectification of the contract for mistake.

Samantha helped a claims handler client to achieve an early and favorable settlement of a circa £3.5 million claim for alleged negligence in the conduct of employers and public liability claims over a two-year period.

Working with brokers, she secured settlement in full of a £1.3m property damage and loss of rent claim relating to a fire at a cinema and restaurant, notwithstanding the purported avoidance of the policy for material non-disclosure and misrepresentation by the insurer.

She negotiated and placed a £1.5 million environmental insurance programme for a developer client which pushed traditional boundaries and genuinely exceeded expectations of what could be achieved in the marketplace.

Samantha helped a financial adviser client secure a complete indemnity from its primary and excess professional indemnity insurers for damages and defence costs in relation to 82 claims with expected losses of up to £4 million following a block notification in connection with a potential mortgage fraud. Prior to her involvement, insurers had disputed the scope of the notification and raised aggregation issues.

Successfully rebutting the claim at pre-action stage, she acted on behalf of chartered accountants and registered auditors in connection with a claim arising out of alleged failure to identify fraud during their audit of the accounts of a firm of independent financial advisers.

In spite of the fact that we were not advising on the corporate aspects of the deal, Samantha was approached (due to her insurance expertise) to negotiate a buyer side W&I policy in connection with a £600 million acquisition, which equated to one of the largest W&I placements on the insurance market that year.

She advised a design consultancy in an Aus $300 million dispute with its group PI Insurers arising out of the construction of a rail link in Australia (the largest piece of litigation in Australian history). In spite of there being a number of complex policy coverage issues including aggregation of claims; scope of the insuring clause; policy attachment as between local jurisdiction and group policies; late notification, material non-disclosure and potential breach of 'reasonable co-operation' provisions, Samantha secured a favorable settlement fo...

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