David L. Fox

David L. Fox is a Partner in the Litigation Practice of Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP.

He is an experienced litigator in federal and state courts in New York and has successfully litigated matters as pro hac vice counsel in other jurisdictions including California, Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey, Florida and Delaware. He has been lead counsel in trials and arbitrations involving a wide variety of commercial litigation matters. Over the past 20 years, Mr. Fox has focused most of his practice on litigation, advice and transactional work for insurance companies. This has involved both claims against other insurers, reinsurers, general agents, claims administrators, liquidators and regulators, as well as advice and transactional work involving the management of insurance companies and their affiliated companies. He also handles non-insurance claims for breach of contract, conversion, breach of fiduciary duties, unfair competition, tortious interference and fraudulent conveyance. Mr. Fox is a member of ARIAS-U.S., the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the American Bar Association.

In recent cases, Mr. Fox successfully defended an insurance carrier in an arbitration brought by a managing agent for damages based on an alleged wrongful termination. The arbitrators dismissed the agent’s case in its entirety after a 4 day hearing. In another matter on behalf of an insurer, Mr. Fox obtained an order from a court in Colorado, compelling arbitration of a former president’s claim to damages for arising out of a profit sharing plan. In a third matter, Mr. Fox won an order in federal court, ruling that a claimant to an reinsurance agreement could not proceed with the claim because it was not the real party in interest, and that if it was, then the dispute must be arbitrated under the reinsurance agreement. In one additional case in Kentucky, Mr. Fox obtained a judgment dismissing a bad faith action brought by a former agent on the ground that the insured had not been damaged and that the assignee of the insured was not an insured for purposes of the bad faith statutes.

Mr. Fox has been certified as an arbitrator by the AIDA Reinsurance and Insurance Arbitration Society (ARIAS-U.S.), making him one of 246 ARIAS-U.S. Certified Arbitrators, according to ARIAS-U.S. Quarterly magazine. Mr. Fox joined SGR as Counsel in 2010 and became a Partner in January 2011. Prior to joining Smith, Gambrell & Russell, he was a Partner and later, Counsel at Herrick Feinstein, LLP. Prior to Herrick Feinstein, Mr. Fox was a founding partner at Felcher Fox and Litner, where he focused on general commercial and corporate litigation with special concentration on insurance and reinsurance matters.

Mr. Fox received his B.A. at Hamilton College in 1963 and then went on to receive his LL.B. at Columbia Law School in 1966. He is admitted to the New York State Bar, the United States Distict Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, the Northern District of Florida and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.