William K. McVisk

Bill has been a litigator and trial lawyer for more than 30 years and has focused his practice on representing insurers and insureds in insurance coverage and bad faith disputes and hospitals and nursing homes in medical negligence cases. He has also acted as general counsel for the American Board of Medical Specialties, the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery and the American Board of Otolaryngology Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery. He has tried numerous serious cases, including insurance bad faith cases and personal injury cases with injuries as severe as brain damage and death. Bill has been selected to Illinois Super Lawyers® andIllinois Leading Lawyers® since 2019. He was selected by his peers in the 27th Edition (2021) and 29th Edition (2023) of The Best Lawyers in America© for Insurance Law and Insurance Litigation.

Bill was recently selected as the 2024 Lawyer of the Year for Chicago: Litigation – Insurance by U.S. News and World Report and Best Lawyers®.

• Illinois Association of Defense Trial Counsel, President 2019-2020
• American College of Coverage Counsel (ACCC), Fellow
  
• DRI, Insurance Law Committee and Regional Director, North Central Region
• Illinois Association of Healthcare Attorneys, Former President
• American Society of Medical Association Counsel

• Cable v. ProAssurance Casualty Co., 2024 WL 2292900 (N.D. Ill. 2024). Won motion for summary judgment finding that insurer did not act in bad faith or breach the duty to settle when it rejected a settlement offer in a case that was subsequently tried and resulted in an excess verdict. Court noted that the claims handlers agreed that the case was defensible and there was no evidence that defense counsel ever advised that there was a less than 50% chance of a defense verdict at trial. Additionally, the evidence showed that the insurer and defense counsel advised the insured of the settlement demand and kept him advised on the status of the case.
• ProAssurance Specialty Ins. v. Imperial Realty Co., 545 F.Supp.3d 618 (N.D. Ill. 2021). Won motion for judgment on pleadings finding that insurer had no duty to defend or indemnify. Court found that a realty company that managed property in which the insurer’s named insured was a tenant was not an insured under the policy.  The real estate company argued that it was an insured because the policy defined “insured” to include an organization while acting as the property manager for the named insured. However, the court found that the property manager was not the named insured’s property manager, but was the property manager for the building owner. The property manager also argued that it was insured under a blanket additional insured endorsement, but the court found that under the endorsement, the property would only be covered for liability arising out of the operations of the named insured, and the underlying complaint alleged that the property manager was liable for its own conduct.
• Southwest Disabilities Services and Support v. ProAssurance Specialty Insurance Co., 2018 IL App (1st) 171670 (Ill. Ct. App. 2018). Won motion for judgment on pleadings, which was affirmed on appeal, because claim was not first reported during the policy period. Insured argued that insurer was estopped from denying coverage because it did not defend under a reservation of rights or file a declaratory judgment action, and that duty to defend was created because ProAssurance was advised that an occurrence had taken place during its policy period. Court agreed that duty to defend was not triggered because the claim was not reported during the claims made policy period.
• Mid-Century Ins. Co. v. Pizza by Marchelloni, 2018 WL 215758 (C.D. Ill. 5/10/2018). Won motion for judgment on pleadings based on exclusion for bodily injury due to the use of an auto by any insured. The plaintiff claimed that the driver of the auto at fault was not an “insured” under the policy, so the auto exclusion did not apply. However, the driver was alleged to have been in the process of delivering a pizza for the named insured under the policy, and the policy defined “insured to include any employee of the named insured.
• Christmas v. Hugar, 409 Ill.App.3d 91 (1st Dist. 2011). Represented Loretto Hospital and won motion to dismiss medical malpractice case with prejudice because the physician that authored the plaintiff’s report attesting to the merits of the case, as required by 735 ILCS 5/2-622, was not licensed as a podiatrist at the time he authored the report, even though he was licensed as an osteopathic physician at that time, since his criticism related to care provided by a podiatrist. Appellate court affirmed the dismissal.
• Patrick Engineering v. Old Republic Ins. Co., 2012 IL App (2d) 111111 (Ill. Ct. App. 2012). Won summary judgment for insured, Commonwealth Edison Co., on question of whether it was covered as an additional insured on a policy issued to a subcontractor engineering firm in connection with an excavation project, and summary judgment was affirmed on appeal. The insurer argued that the loss was excluded under the professional services exclusion because the liability stemmed from engineering services provided to Commonwealth Edison by the named insured. The court held that the separation of insureds clause prevented the professional services exclusion from applying to Commonwealth Edison, which had not provided professional services.
• Iowa Physicians’ Clinic Med. Foundation v. Physicians Insurance Co. of Wisconsin, 547 F.3d 810 (7th Cir. 2008). Won judgment on the pleadings in favor of insurer in suit alleging that insurer breached duty of good faith by failing to settle claim within the insurer’s policy limits, resulting in a verdict of $3.5 million, which was $2.5 million in excess of the insurer’s policy limits. The insurer’s policy covered the defendant physician, but did not cover the clinic which employed the physician. After the judgment was entered, the insurer paid its policy limits, and the clinic paid the remainder of the judgment. The clinic and physician then sued the insurer for breaching the duty to settle, claiming that they would not have been subjected to the excess verdict if the insurer had acted in good faith. The trial court granted judgment on the pleadings for the insurer, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed. The court ruled that the physician could not sue the insurer for bad faith, since the clinic had paid the excess judgment, meaning that the physician had not been damaged. The court further ruled that the insurer owed no duty of good faith to the clinic, even though it was vicariously liable for the physician, because the clinic was not an insured under the policy.
• Won summary judgment for auto insurer in an underinsured motorist claim, establishing that the $1 million liability limit of the underinsured motorist coverage had to be reduced by the amount of the workers’ compensation payments made by the same carrier, and that if the damages sustained by the plaintiff were less than the $1 million policy limit, the workers’ compensation payments had to be deducted from the amount awarded. The plaintiff argued that the policy precluded the insurer from deducting the workers’ compensation payments since the policy did not apply to the direct or indirect benefit of any workers’ compensation insurer. The plaintiff maintained that since the underinsured motorist insurer was also the workers’ compensation insurer, allowing it to deduct the workers’ compensation payments from its limits would benefit the workers’ compensation insurer. The court ruled that the language of the policy requiring that the worker’s compensation benefits be deducted from the limits was clear and unambiguous, and further ruled that to prevent double recovery, the workers’ compensation benefits had to be deducted from any award that was less than the policy limits as well. The case is on appeal.
• Wright v. American States Ins. Co., 765 N.E.2d 690 (Ind.App. 2002). Summary judgment for insurer affirmed on question of whether the insured school’s CGL policy covered damages for injuries to several school children in a crash of a school bus operated by the school. The school and the plaintiff in the underlying case claimed that the CGL policy should apply because the complaint alleged that the school was negligent for failing to investigate the driver’s driving record, employing an incompetent driver with a suspended license, and failing to equip the bus to prevent injuries to the children. The court ruled that the insurer owed no duty to defend or indemnify the school, because the efficient and predominant cause of the injuries was the use of an auto, which was excluded under the policy.
• National Union Fire Ins. Co. v. R. Olson Constr. Contractors, 329 Ill.App. 3d 228 (2002). Represented insurer in suit against contractor claiming that it was an additional insured under the policy issued to its subcontractor. The court ruled that there was no coverage for the contractor, because the additional insured endorsement provided that there would be no coverage for any liability resulting from the additional insured’s own negligence. Since the complaint did not seek to hold the contractor vicariously liable for the subcontractor’s conduct, there was no coverage, and the insurer had no duty to defend.

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