Gulf Coast Practice

Thompson Coe’s Marine Litigation team comprehensively represents the firm’s clients with maritime disputes. Our Marine attorneys have decades of experience representing clients in complex marine insurance issues, catastrophic loss claims, Jones Act claims, longshoremen’s claims, contractual indemnity disputes, cargo claims, and breach of contract matters.

Thompson Coe’s Transportation Litigation team represents hundreds of motor carriers and transportation-related businesses in claims involving severe personal injury, wrongful death, and property damage resulting from trucking accidents. The firm also represents trucking companies and insurers in cargo loss and subrogation claims. Our clients include carriers ranging in size from long-haul carriers operating coast to coast with thousands of tractors to owner-operators with a single truck, along with the companies that insure them.

The Gulf Coast has been a significant oil and natural gas producer for over 100 years. Today, the Gulf Coast region supports one of the largest petrochemical complexes in the world. With dozens of refineries, chemical plants, and now liquefied natural gas export facilities, energy is a big driver of the Gulf Coast economy.

Thompson Coe lawyers have strong Texas and Louisiana roots, possessing a wealth of knowledge and valuable insight into the multiple facets of the oil and gas and other energy-related industries. Our trusted Gulf Coast attorneys handle litigation and out-of-court matters involving on-shore and off-shore exploration and production, transportation, storage, marketing, refining, and processing, including related contractual indemnification and insurance issues.

In recent years, major storms on the Gulf Coast such as Hurricanes Harvey, Katrina, Rita, Gustave, Ike, and Dolly led to a proliferation of high-volume property insurance litigation. After a catastrophe, insurers now face an onslaught of multi-media advertising brought by well-financed and organized plaintiff firms whose goal is to efficiently file a high volume of lawsuits based on the “mass tort” litigation model.

Thompson Coe has unmatched experience helping insurers formulate cost-effective defense strategies to respond to a high volume of lawsuits and claims after a catastrophe.

Thompson Coe litigation capabilities extend well beyond our national reputation as counsel in insurance litigation and coverage disputes. With more than 80 skilled trial and appellate lawyers, many certified in various litigation specialties by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, we regularly represent business and corporate clients directly as plaintiffs and defendants in commercial litigation, administrative and regulatory proceedings, and alternative dispute resolution.

Classifying employees and applying multiple potential compensation schemes to a single accident often call for complex solutions in significant workers’ compensation matters. Thompson Coe has substantial experience handling issues and disputes involving State and Federal workers’ compensation issues.

Whether it’s Longshore, Defense Base Act, FELA, Jones Act, or Voluntary Comp, our lawyers have decades of experience defending employers and carriers. Our lawyers also have significant experience covering workers’ compensation and employer liability matters, including litigating workers’ compensation, bad faith claims, and workers’ compensation insurers in regulatory affairs.

With one of the country’s largest national insurance litigation and coverage practices, Thompson Coe defends insurers nationwide in a broad range of insurance-related controversies, including coverage disputes, bad faith, and other extra-contractual litigation. Our more than 60 insurance trial lawyers represent an exceptional combination of trial and appellate experience with the most profound understanding of the insurance industry and its regulations.

Thompson Coe pursues recovery on behalf of commercial property insurers in specialized industrial sectors such as energy, construction, manufacturing, raw materials, maritime, and other lines of business. The firm also handles personal line losses involving appliance and electrical malfunctions, pipe failures, chimney and flue deficiencies, and other failures encountered in residential structures.

We represent all classes of insurers and insureds in both large and small cases, tailoring our litigation strategy to the needs of each case.

Employers and liability insurers depend on Thompson Coe to navigate the employment practices maze, resolve sensitive employment-related issues, and reduce the risk of costly employment lawsuits. We represent both private and public sector management in connection with all employment-related matters, including compliance with the FLSA, TITLE VII, ADEA, ADA, the FAMILY AND MEDICAL LEAVE ACT, WARN, the National Labor Relations Act, OSHA, and other federal, state and local laws regulating employment.

Lawyers, insurance agents and brokers, architects and engineers, realtors, physicians and other health care providers, registered representatives, and many other professional service providers devote years to giving their clients highly specialized guidance or care. We help clients choose the best path for them—trial, negotiation, or alternative dispute resolution. In addition to managing the risk of litigation, many clients seek our guidance on risk management and dispute avoidance.

Thompson Coe knows how to prepare an effective defense to product liability and mass tort litigation that can involve substantial damage claims, take years before reaching trial, and threaten any company’s future. When plaintiffs target “deep pocket” defendants like healthcare product suppliers, vehicle manufacturers, and their insurers with emotional arguments that run counter to sound science and good law, we respond with the proper settlement, trial, or appeal strategy.

The Gulf Coast presents significant environmental challenges. Thompson Coe’s insurance coverage litigators bring extensive experience to environmental claims, including legacy oilfield cases in Louisiana, exposure to naturally occurring radioactive materials, oil well blowouts, pipeline spills, vessel spills, and various other industrial pollution issues. We adeptly handle claims brought under comprehensive general liability policies spanning from the 1950s to the present.

Our lawyers have engaged in complex disputes concerning pollution coverage and pollution exclusions across the Gulf Coast. We fully understand the legal nuances inherent in environmental coverage disputes, including the evolution of the exclusion clauses contained in many policies and the disparate treatment those exclusions receive across the Gulf Coast region.

As a result, we can assist insurers with coverage investigation and analysis and play an active role in declaratory judgment actions brought by insurers against their insured. In Louisiana, we find that insurers often face liability in direct action claims, sometimes brought up decades after the insured ceased operations.

Whether the direct action is brought by the insured or by a third party, Thompson Coe’s lawyers have significant experience defending insurers in environmental, toxic tort, pollution, legacy oilfield, and other related matters.