Steve Pearson featured in Leading Lawyers Magazine Business Issue

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STEVE PEARSON
Navigating Unchartered
Territories of Coverage Litigation
by Laura Fletcher
The inaugural edition of U.S. News & World
Report’s Best Law Firms listed the litigation
boutique of Meckler Bulger Tilson Marick &
Pearson LLP (MBT) in the first tier of Chicago
insurance law practice, alongside giant firms
like Reed Smith LLP and Sidley Austin LLP.
Steven D. Pearson, who joined the firm at its
founding in 1994, has helped foster MBT’s
expansion with his national insurance coverage
practice, driving the founding of offices in
Phoenix in 2007 and San Francisco in 2011. In
recognition for his critical role in the firm’s
growth, he was made a name partner in 2008.
Pearson focuses his practice on complicated
and difficult insurance coverage litigation. “I get
a lot of complicated messes.”
Many times, his cases have been previously
handled by other lawyers without success, and
clients turn to him for a higher level of expertise.
“He’s often in unchartered territories when it
comes to some of the complex coverage
questions he has to deal with, so he’s on the
cutting edge of some of these issues,” says
John Kennedy of Shefsky & Froelich Ltd, who
frequently faces Pearson in court.
This March at the annual conference for the
Claims & Litigation Management Alliance (CLM)
in San Diego, Pearson’s presentation, “Beyond
the Numbers: The Art of Litigation Management
and Client Retention,” drew a standing-room
only crowd.
“I talk to lawyers…judges, arbitrators, clients
across the country all the time,” says MBT cochairman
Bruce Meckler. “In my mind, he is
emerging nationwide as one of the finest
lawyers in the country. I don’t even think he’s
peaked yet in terms of his business potential.”
Pearson has always imagined having this
kind of niche practice. He is passionate about
trial work in every aspect.
“Steve is the firm conscience,” says MBT
partner Janet Davis, who, along with Pearson,
is on the firm management committee.
“Everybody is always trying to do what’s best
for the firm, but he really focuses on the goals
that we’ve set, keeping us on the right track.”
Pearson’s reputation is such that he often
receives client referrals from opposing counsel
that he has defeated in court. “It’s really the
ultimate compliment,” he admits.
Pearson attributes his edge in coverage law to
being able to travel and observe the nation’s best
civil litigators in action during the earliest stages
of his career. “You look for those traits that
really fit with your personality…and then blend
that into who you are… We’re all kind of artists
that share similar values, similar work ethics.”
He is “one of if not the most impressive
strategists I’ve worked with,” says Davis.
Pearson’s strategic process begins with
attacking messy cases and honing them down
to their most critical components, which he files
in one of the white binders shelved on his office
wall, a library some people joke about.
“Steve’s creativity with legal arguments is
probably second to none. You can’t do
that unless you’re over-the-top prepared,”
says Meckler.
Kennedy agrees. Pearson once testified on
the spur of the moment before a court on
Kennedy’s behalf, to disprove the opposition’s
claim that their respective clients were not
acting at arm’s length. “Steve is the guy who
thinks outside of the box that the box came in.”
Cleaning Up Insurance Coverage Messes
One opposing counsel who recommended
Pearson to clients is Brian J. Campbell of
Campbell Law Group Chtd. in Phoenix. The
two met through Pearson’s second legal case
based in Arizona, which Campbell describes as
“groundbreaking.”
The case had evolved out of a flurry of
construction projects that were rushed to
completion as the recession came crashing
down on the Phoenix real estate market. As
representative of a general contractor’s insurer in
a coverage dispute, Pearson fought a two-front
battle against Campbell’s client, who owned the
building and was suing the contractor for faulty
construction, and the insurers of the building’s
many sub-contractors, who refused to pay their
share for coverage of the building’s flaws.
Pearson persuaded his client to follow a
“pay-and-chase” strategy, in which they offered
money to Campbell’s plaintiff in a quick
settlement and then pursued funds from all the
sub-contractors involved through a series of
mediations. He structured a relationship
between the first litigation and all the
subsequent litigation work, “an arrangement
unique under Arizona law,” Campbell notes.
“He was challenged through a special
master process all the way through the court of
appeals, and he was proven right at each
stage,” says Campbell.

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Effectively, Pearson served as defendant’s
counsel, plaintiff’s counsel, and appellate
attorney on this single case. This sort of
dynamic litigation is a typical requirement of the
“messes” Pearson handles, and in this
particular instance it made law in Arizona.
“Steve is a…go-to attorney on a complex
case that requires knowledge and strategy,”
says Alex Jivan of Farmers Insurance. “Many
attorneys stop at knowledge. It's creative
strategy and respect of the community that get
you results.”
Pearson’s ability to understand and respect
the legal community in different locales proved
particularly important in a reinsurance fraud
case he handled for billionaire investor Diane
Hendricks, in which a reinsurance company in
Bermuda offered one of the Hendricks’
insurance subsidiaries a very complicated
captive reinsurance arrangement, which it then
secretly re-wrote to avoid losses.
The case took him from federal courts in
Chicago, Michigan, and California to the U.S.
Supreme Court, the courts of Bermuda, and
now the Privy Council of the United Kingdom,
the British equivalent of the Supreme Court.
When Pearson worked out a budget for the
case, it was so expensive that he discouraged
Hendricks from pursuing action, but his client
insisted and will likely prevail in court.
Hendricks, who started Hendricks Holding
Co. with her husband, Kenneth, in 1982, is one
of only four women on the Forbes “400 Richest
People in America” list and earned her fortune
without a college education. Therefore, she is
very careful about whom she trusts. “The
integrity of Steve Pearson is impeccable… I
mean I like the man… Compared to other
attorneys I’ve seen in a courtroom, Steve does
it with such respect… I like his style.”
Pearson applies his strategy and style even
to the mediations and alternative dispute
resolutions that often replace traditional trials in
construction cases.
“Even though he’s not the mediator, he’s the
one who’s orchestrating what’s going on,” notes
Davis, the MBT partner. “He’s good at finding a
way to have… many different personalities
come together and reach a solution.”
“a man of deep and abiding character.”
Pearson grew up in a blue collar family in
Villa Park, the son of an electrician and a
homemaker. He worked his way through the
University of Minnesota and DePaul College of
Law by running his own janitorial business and
later by serving under a 711 license as a
prosecutor.
Assisting his father during the summers as a
boy, he realized that he never wanted to be
“under the thumb of other people.”
The desire to be free from constraints
attracted him to the vastness of civil litigation.
It also ignited his love for airplanes. He began
taking flying lessons in 1992 and obtained his
flying license in 1994. He has used his
Beechcraft Bonanza A-36 for most of his legal
trips, and in 1999, he began volunteering both
his plane and his time for the non-profit Angel
Flight Central, which provides free flights to the
needy, particularly those who must fly long
distances for medical care.
Pearson has completed 28 flights for the
organization, including the evacuation of a family
from Baton Rouge in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina. This, according to Executive Director
Don Sumple, “puts him in top 10 percent of
Angel Flight pilots during our 17-year history.”
Pearson is now chair of Angel Flight
Central’s board of directors and has raised
more than $80,000 for the organization though
a golf classic that he sponsors.
Pearson’s son and daughter began
accompanying him on flights while they were
still young. Both children are pilots and are
pursuing degrees in medicine. They inherited
their love of science from their mother, Angela,
who studied biomedical engineering.
Pearson’s sister, Cheryl Hansen, notes that
her parents were very proud of Pearson’s
successful legal career, “but I really don’t think
they grasped the whole magnitude of what he
had done.”
According to Pearson’s brother Rick, they
had a fuller appreciation for his flying hobby.
“Dad loved every chance he got to go up flying
with Steve.” ■
Blue Collar Roots
As Pearson’s client base has expanded, he
has continued to take pro bono assignments
from the federal trial bar in Chicago. Currently,
he is representing a Stateville prisoner who
alleges that the prison’s acting medical director
denied him care.
Pearson also evaluates bar candidates for
the Illinois Supreme Court Committee on
Character and Fitness. He was appointed by
Justice Robert Thomas, who calls Pearson as
This article originally appeared in Leading Lawyers Magazine—Business Edition for 2012 and has been reprinted with permission. © 2012 Law Bulletin Publishing Co.