Eric M. Clarkson

Senior Associate

Biography

Eric Clarkson is a seasoned coverage attorney with extensive litigation and transactional experience across a wide range of insurance lines. He began his legal career with SDV Fenchurch after racing endurance sports professionally and working as an advocate for survivors of domestic violence. He brings the tenacity and dedication to justice he built in those fields to policyholder advocacy.

With years of coverage litigation under his belt, Eric currently focuses on managing many of SDV Fenchurch’s transactional services and ensuring policies are placed properly to avoid the risk of insurance disputes in the case of a loss. His extensive market knowledge allows him to advise clients on how to cover their operations and operations of those acting on their behalf through contractual risk transfer, dedicated lines, self-insurance, captive arrangements, and other mechanisms. Eric focuses heavily on vendor, contractor and subcontractor insurance reviews, to ensure intended risk transfer through indemnity and additional insured coverage. He also advises large commercial lenders, developers and general contractors on builders risk and commercial general liability placements for a range of residential and commercial construction.

Through his work at the firm, Eric has become an industry leader in construction risk transfer. He designs and runs trainings for risk managers, insurance brokers, developers and contractors to help them develop their teams’ own insurance knowledge and strategy. He has been invited to speak on construction risk transfer by AGC of California and publishes updates on emerging critical issues in the construction insurance space. Eric takes pride in his work and enjoys the challenge of breaking down complex insurance concepts and construction disputes to hold insurance markets accountable to policyholder expectations.

Experience

Eric has extensive experience managing complex insurance and construction litigation. His successes include significant recoveries for clients from both first- and third-party insurers – from course-to-construction losses to completed operations bodily injury claims. Eric has specialized experience in pollution liability claims, including both long-tail remediation losses as well as development interruption and business income losses stemming from unidentified historical contamination. Currently, Eric focuses heavily on his leading role in SDV Fenchurch’s Subcontractor Insurance Review Programs (“SIRP”) through which he advises hundreds of projects on contractual risk transfer and construction insurance placements. Through this work, he and SDV Fenchurch have collated unparallelled market knowledge that they use to ensure risk transfer to downstream insurance and advance policyholder needs through advocacy to brokers and underwriters.

Insights by Eric M. Clarkson

The Grenfell & Champlain Towers: Risk Management Considerations in the Wake of Catastrophic Loss — A UK/US Comparison

1. Introduction As part of the multinational collaborative relationship between Saxe Doernberger & Vita, P.C. and Fenchurch Law, we continually find ourselves in conversations about the sometimes subtle but sometimes drastic differences between risk management and coverage considerations from one country to the next. These differences are often highlighted by the fallout from large catastrophic […]
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Emerging Issues in Construction CGL Insurance Part 1: Continuing or Progressive Loss Exclusions

The risks and losses associated with construction operations and property development push many insurance concepts to their limits. As a result, the construction industry has long been at the forefront of many complex insurance coverage issues and both drives but also depends on market standards to assess and adequately address risks. SDV closely monitors insurance […]
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Creeping Incrementalism in Downstream Insurance: Carriers are Stretching Standard CGL Concepts to Untenable Limits

In the construction sector, the importance of closely vetting downstream parties’ insurance has never been more critical. The markets have been hardening with no seeming end in sight and carriers are looking for any way to get an edge. Owners and general contractors need to be on the lookout for ever broader carrier-specific expansions of […]
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Admissions

California
U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
U.S. District Court, Central District of California
U.S. District Court, Northern District of California
U.S. District Court, Southern District of California
U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California