Michael Menapace

Practice Areas

Michael is an insurance lawyer, primarily a litigator defending insurance companies, reinsurers, and related companies from a wide range of claims that threaten clients’ businesses. He is also a counselor, law school professor, and litigator in areas beyond insurance. Michael is the Co-Chair of Wiggin’s Insurance Practice Group.

Michael represents insurers in litigation and arbitrations across the country with deep experience in first and third-party insurance coverage, insurance business practices, bad faith, reinsurance, premium calculations, and allocation among policies. Insurers often come to Michael with their most sensitive disputes and problems that do not have ready-made answers. His clients appreciate his creative solutions that fit within their business goals. As a general litigator, he has tried cases concerning utility and energy infrastructure construction, securities class actions, and merger and acquisition claims. Leading insurance industry trade groups have engaged Michael to represent them on matters of industry-wide importance before trial and appellate courts. Michael is a Fellow of the American College of Coverage Counsel.

Michael is serving as national coordinating counsel for a domestic carrier’s COVID-19 business interruption coverage disputes, recently defended an insurance company in a nationwide class-action suit targeting its claims payment practices, achieved a seven-figure victory for a respondent in a reinsurance arbitration, and is actively engaged in litigation under the Medicare Secondary Payer Act.

In his role as counselor, Michael advises insurers on compliance and regulatory issues. He represents stock, mutual, and captive insurers on their dealings with state regulators, including proceedings concerning rates, applications for acquisition of control, and market conduct exams. He has represented clients in connection with internal investigations and responses to government inquiries and subpoenas, including federal and state inquiries into forced placed insurance, contingent commissions/broker compensation, and finite reinsurance transactions.

Michael’s practice also includes cybersecurity. He counsels insurance companies and other business entities on a variety of data security and privacy issues and defends companies facing potential data breach liability.

Michael lectures and publishes regularly on insurance and cybersecurity topics and has testified before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee as an invited expert on cybersecurity and insurance. He teaches insurance law at the Quinnipiac University School of Law and is a Non-resident Scholar at the Insurance Information Institute. He is Co-editor of The Handbook on Additional Insureds, Co-editor of A Practical Guide to Cyber Insurance for Business, and is co-author of The Reference Handbook on the CGL Policy – Coverage A Principal Exclusions. Michael has been listed in Who’s Who Legal: Insurance and Reinsurance, Who’s Who Legal; Thought Leaders, and Super Lawyers for Insurance Law. He is active in the American Bar Association TIPS Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Committee (having served as the Committee Chair).

Michael received his J.D. from Quinnipiac University School of Law and a B.M. from The Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford. He began his legal career in the insurance/reinsurance practice group of a major international law firm. He is admitted to practice in Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts.

Michael is a Past President of the Hartford County Bar Association, the oldest bar association in the country, and a long-time member of its Board of Directors. He was the recipient of the New Leaders of the Law Award from the Connecticut Law Tribune. Before practicing law, Michael was a college music professor and administrator with an active U.S. and international music performance schedule, including as a saxophonist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. He was Chair of the Board of Trustees of The Hartt School, University of Hartford.