Mark Plevin handles mass tort bankruptcy cases and insurance coverage disputes. His unusual blend of experience in these two distinct areas has resulted in him assuming a lead counsel role, on behalf of both U.S. and international insurers, in some of the nation’s most important mass tort bankruptcy cases. Mark also litigates major insurance coverage cases and handles trials and appeals in both bankruptcy and insurance matters.

In the asbestos bankruptcy area, Mark served as lead trial counsel for several insurers in the Plant Insulation, Thorpe Insulation, Federal-Mogul, and W.R. Grace confirmation hearings. Before that, Mark was lead trial counsel for several insurers in the Combustion Engineering confirmation hearing, then orally argued for those insurers in the subsequent district court and Third Circuit appeals; and in JT Thorpe, Mark argued in the Fifth Circuit the insurers’ appeal of the confirmation order, having first obtained a stay of the confirmation order pending appeal. Currently, Mark is playing a leading role for several insurers in the Imerys Talc America, Cyprus Mines, and Aldrich Pumps asbestos bankruptcy cases.

Mark also represents insurers in bankruptcy cases involving mass torts besides asbestos. Currently, Mark represents insurers in diocesan bankruptcy cases in California, New York, and Maryland. His other current and past representations of insurers in mass tort bankruptcy cases include cases involving opioids, sex abuse and sex trafficking, silica, a variety of defective products, opioids, and liability for wildfires and marketing of firearms.

Outside the mass tort area, Mark has experience representing both debtors and creditors in non-mass tort bankruptcy cases throughout the country. He was one of the debtors’ lawyers in Baldwin-United, then the nation’s largest-ever Chapter 11 bankruptcy case. Mark’s creditor representations have included manufacturing companies, banks, airlines, consulting firms, insurance companies, shopping center owners, and health care providers.

Mark has litigated a broad range of bankruptcy matters, including plan confirmation objections, automatic stay issues, issues concerning the sale and disposition of significant assets, claim objections, estimation proceedings, motions to appoint trustees, avoidance actions, approvals of settlements, and bankruptcy court jurisdiction and venue issues. Some of these matters involved trials in which Mark acted as lead counsel, and some involved appeals that Mark argued. In addition to litigating, Mark also counsels bankruptcy clients in pre-litigation situations, including negotiating prepackaged bankruptcy plans, and with respect to receiverships, assignments for benefit of creditors, and corporate dissolutions. 

In the insurance coverage area, Mark has long experience as lead counsel representing insurers in coverage lawsuits involving environmental, asbestos, products liability, and sex abuse underlying claims. For example:

• In American Home Products, a multi-phase case involving 39 separate contaminated sites, Mark won several summary judgment rulings knocking out of the case several of the most costly sites;

• In Exxon Corporation, an environmental insurance coverage lawsuit concerning Exxon’s claims for more than $1.5 billion in insurance coverage relating to approximately 5200 sites in the United States and Canada, Mark’s clients won nine summary adjudication motions and settled after trial commenced;

• In In re Eljer-Brass Insurance Coverage Litigation, a products liability coverage case, the Illinois Supreme Court, following Mark’s oral argument, adopted a “trigger of coverage” ruling sought by our clients and other insurance companies; and

• In Oblates, a case in which sex abuse claimants holding stipulated judgments were seeking coverage from a religious order’s insurer, the case settled on the eve of a federal jury trial shortly after Mark’s team won motions in limine excluding testimony from one of the plaintiffs’ two experts and limiting the scope of the plaintiffs’ trial testimony.

Mark has been ranked in Chambers USA for 22 years, including in 2024. Chambers has repeatedly named Mark as one of the top lawyers in both the bankruptcy and insurance fields, nationally, in California, and in the District of Columbia.  Chambers currently lists Mark in insurance both nationally and in California (in Band 1). Mark has also repeatedly been listed in The Best Lawyers In America for both insurance law and bankruptcy and creditor-debtor rights/insolvency and reorganization law, in the Guide to the World’s Leading Insolvency & Restructuring Lawyers and the Guide to the World’s Leading Insurance and Reinsurance Lawyers, and as a Washington, D.C. Super Lawyer in the field of Bankruptcy and Creditor/Debtor Rights. Lawdragon included Mark in its 2022, 2023, and 2024 lists of 500 Leading U.S. Bankruptcy and Restructuring Lawyers.

Mark regularly speaks on bankruptcy, insurance, and litigation topics. He has spoken at conferences or seminars for the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, the Third Circuit Judicial Conference, the American Bankruptcy Institute, Perrin Conferences, Mealey’s Lexis- Nexis, ALI-ABA, the Practising Law Institute, HB Conferences, the American Bar Association’s Insurance Coverage Litigation Committee, and at law school symposia.

Before starting law school, Mark was sports director of WCDB-FM and WSUA-AM in Albany, New York, where he did play-by-play of college basketball, football, soccer, and NHL hockey.

Education & Admissions

Education

• State University of New York at Albany, B.A., summa cum laude, economics

• University of Virginia School of Law, J.D., Order of the Coif, Virginia Law Review

Admissions

• California

• District of Columbia