Robins Kaplan LLP Announces New Partners and Principals

MINNEAPOLIS, MN—January 4, 2016—Robins Kaplan LLP^® is proud to announce that Jonathan Mutch, and Denise Rahne have been named partners. The firm’s Executive Board has also elected Katherine Barrett Wiik, Melissa D’Alelio, Matthew Frerichs, and William Reiss as principals.  

Partners:

Jonathan Mutch has more than 15 years of experience advising and representing insurers in complex claims, large losses, and business disputes with an emphasis on first-party coverage matters, professional responsibility claims, and fraud investigations.

Denise Rahne’s practice involves a diverse range of matters, including fiduciary litigation, estates and trusts litigation, intellectual property litigation, and internal investigations.  

Principals:

Melissa D’Alelio counsels clients in cases involving a wide variety of insurance lines, including commercial property and liability policies, and represents them in litigation and trial. She has extensive experience defending litigation over collapse, design defect, earth movement, environmental exposure, and catastrophe claims such as tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, fires, and windstorms, and has also represented the firm’s insurer clients in assessing their duty to defend and indemnify their insureds based on the terms of their liability policies. Most recently, Ms. D’Alelio successfully defended Westport Insurance Corporation against a bad faith claim related to storm surge damage from Superstorm Sandy in which the New York Supreme Court, First Appellate Division, affirmed a lower court’s prior two dismissals of the bad faith count. Ms. D’Alelio serves as Vice Chair of the ABA Property Insurance Law Committee, a position she has held for the past five years.

Matthew Frerichs specializes in estate planning and trust and estate administration. He represents individuals and business owners in all aspects of estate planning and business succession, striving to provide clients with peace of mind and reassurance that their legacy is in the best of hands. He also represents individuals and corporate fiduciaries in estate and trust administration proceedings and closely collaborates with the firm’s litigation team when a problem involving an estate or a fiduciary obligation becomes litigious.

William Reiss has more than a decade of experience representing both plaintiffs and defendants in high-profile antitrust litigation. His practice is focused on complex antitrust and commodity futures class actions, and he has particular experience prosecuting antitrust violations in the automotive, marine products, and financial services industries, and representing clients in the pharmaceutical industry. Currently, Mr. Reiss serves as co-lead counsel on behalf of a class of consumers and businesses who purchased automobiles for end use in In re Automotive Parts Antitrust Litigation, which stems from the largest-ever criminal investigation by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. Mr. Reiss also serves as co-lead counsel on behalf of a class of consumers who purchased disposable contact lenses in In re Disposable Contact Lens Antitrust Litigation.