Overview

Yale Glazer brings a litigator’s perspective to commercial litigation and insurance coverage matters from the earliest stages of a claim through trial and appeal.  His vast experience across first- and third-party disputes allows him to anticipate likely outcomes and assists the client in making informed, cost efficient decisions about their claim handling options and litigation strategies.

Yale Glazer is a partner in Dilworth Paxson’s New York office who represents insurers in first- and third-party coverage disputes and general commercial litigation. He specializes in first-party property claims, business income/extra expense disputes, construction-related coverage and other significant losses, and is often asked to become involved pre-litigation, via examinations under oath and to provide detailed coverage analysis.  That early involvement allows Yale the opportunity to largely predict the end result so that clients can intelligently forecast their potential liabilities and make strategic decisions, both for the individual case and to protect favorable caselaw industry-wide. 

Having handled coverage matters from inception through appeal, Yale knows that not every disagreement should become prolonged litigation.  He focuses on the facts and policy language that are likely to determine the parties’ positions, helping clients assess where they have leverage, where exposure may exist and what battles are worth fighting.  When litigation is necessary, his litigation and appellate experience informs strategy development. That perspective helps clients evaluate their options with both the immediate coverage question and the potential course of the dispute in view.

Yale began his legal career as an assistant district attorney in the Bronx County District Attorney’s Office, where he developed substantial litigation and trial experience. The habits developed as a prosecutor continue to shape his approach to coverage disputes: establish the facts, test the evidence, understand the strengths and weaknesses of the respective positions and build an argument capable of withstanding scrutiny. Combined with decades of insurance coverage work at a boutique New York commercial litigation/insurance coverage firm, that foundation allows Yale to approach disputes with the perspective of a lawyer who understands both how a case is built and how it will ultimately need to be presented.

Representative Experience

  • Secured summary judgment in a first-party property matter in the Southern District of New York based on the insured’s more than one year failure to provide timely notice;
  • Successfully argued before the United States Court of Appeals, winning affirmance of summary judgment against both insured and its mortgagee based on mortgagee’s lack of standing due to transfer of note and insured’s lack of insurable interest and failure to timely return proof of loss;
  • Court granted pre-answer motion to dismiss an insured’s coverage claim arising from an underlying patent infringement action based on the policy’s intellectual property exclusion.
  • Obtained summary judgment against an insurance broker/agent for the amount insurer client paid to settle insured’s claim after the agent’s misrepresentations resulted in the insurer removing a protective safeguard endorsement after the loss occurred;.
  • Established that an insured was not entitled to successive policy renewals to obtain coverage for a claimed loss despite an allegedly improper cancellation arising from missing premium-finance documentation;
  • Obtained summary judgment in the District of New Jersey, rejecting an insured’s interpretation of the period of restoration and its claim for extended business income coverage where the insured did not restore operations following the loss;
  • Successfully defended dismissal of coverage claims before the Second Circuit based on expiration of the policy’s suit-limitation period ;

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