Nick is a partner in the firm’s New York and Princeton offices who focuses his practice on insurance recovery litigation and counseling. Nick also represents clients in business disputes outside the insurance coverage context.
In his insurance recovery practice, Nick represents policyholder clients in catastrophic first-party property damage and business interruption claims. He is co-author, with partner Rich Lewis, of Business Income Insurance Disputes, a leading treatise on business interruption and time-element insurance issues. In his third-party liability coverage work, Nick represents companies and executives under D&O and E&O policies, and has represented clients under general liability insurance policies for all manner of underlying claims, including long-tail environmental and asbestos claims that have involved complicated coverage and allocation issues He has also handled matters under employment practices liability policies, inland marine insurance policies, and fidelity and crime policies. Nick has gone to verdict in jury and non-jury trials on several cases, and has worked on reinsurance arbitrations, including domestic and foreign confidential arbitrations.
In Nick’s commercial litigation practice, he has represented former business partners in disputes involving RICO and Lanham Act claims, a dispute between former corporate affiliates involving the interpretation of the former subsidiary’s distribution agreement, and disputes involving contractual and creditor rights.
Nick’s experience includes all phases of litigation, including trials and appeals. He has successfully gone to verdict for his clients in both jury and non-jury trials, an increasing rarity in contemporary commercial ligation. Nick has appeared in state and federal courts throughout the country, and he has also represented numerous clients for insurance and commercial litigation matters in both state and federal appellate courts.
Prior to joining Reed Smith in 2022, Nick took a leadership role in pro bono practice at a major law firm. In his own pro bono practice, Nick has represented clients seeking asylum and other forms of relief from deportation, including in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. After Superstorm Sandy, he worked with Volunteer Lawyers for Justice and other organizations to bring insurance coverage support to those in need. He drafted a manual focused on insurance coverage issues that was distributed to victims of the storm, and a second manual designed for lawyers assisting those victims. He also worked on and supervised nearly a dozen pro bono insurance coverage matters related to Sandy. In addition, Nick has handled impact pro bono litigation, including teaming with the ACLU of New Jersey to overturn city ordinances that criminalized seeking food or monetary assistance. As a result of that litigation, the ordinances were eliminated, and a donation was made to a local organization supplying meals and other services to the homeless. Nick is a member and past chair of the Pro Bono Committee of the New Jersey State Bar Association.
