Casualty and Insurance Issues in Commercial Leases

Alan Di Sciullo, Esq. is the retired Director of Global Real Estate for Shearman & Sterling LLP.  In that capacity, he directed the firm’s worldwide real estate portfolio.  He has been a Senior Vice President with a major global banking organization working on its corporate real estate merger and acquisitions activities and was of counsel with a New Jersey law firm.  The large portion of his career was with Morgan Stanley as a First Vice President and Senior Counsel where he was responsible for its real estate transactions and related litigation. Among the transactions Mr. Di Sciullo did at Morgan Stanley included the largest leases at the original World Trade Center totaling over 1.2 million sf and the claims and relocations following the 9/11 attack on the Towers, the development of the 600,000 sf Discover Card Headquarters in Riverwoods, Il., and over 200,000 sf for Dean Witter Trust’s headquarters in Harborside Plaza, Jersey City, NJ. Mr. Di Sciullo has been active in civic and professional activities. He was a member of President Reagan’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control (the Grace Committee) and was elected a fellow of the American College of Real Estates Lawyers (ACREL) in 2003.  He has been an executive committee member of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) RPTE’s Section and member of its Council and Planning committee. He has been a co-chair of its Groups and Substantive Committee and a long-serving chair of the Office Leasing Committee and various other lease-realted committees. He presently chairs the Senior Leader's Division Alternative Dispute Resolution committee.  He had served as President of the New York chapter of the International Association of Corporate Real Estate Executives (NACORE), was a director on that organization’s international board of directors and was president-elect of its educational affiliate, the Institute of Corporate Real Estate. He served as an advisory member on the New York chapter of its successor organization, Corenet Global. He chaired the West Windsor Planning Board between 1993 and 1997 and received numerous leadership and planning awards in that position.  He served as a director on the New Jersey Planning Officials board from 1996 to 2014.  Mr. Di Sciullo is a co-author of a 2400 page treatise Negotiating and Drafting Commercial Leases (Law Journal Seminars-Press 1995), which is in its twenty-fifth year of publication and supplements.  He has been a frequent author and speaker on commercial real estate issues. Since 1991, Mr. Di Sciullo has taught at New York University’s Schack Masters in Real Estate program and is presently a Professor at that institution. He has received NYU’s Outstanding Teaching and Services awards. He has also served on Corenet Global’s MCR program faculty and has received several Outstanding Faculty awards from that Institute. Mr. Di Sciullo has an undergraduate degree in Government and Economics (cum laude) from Georgetown University and his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center in law.  He also received an M.B.A. in finance from New York University. He has been recognized as a Super Lawyer and is listed in Who’s Who in America and the World and in companion publications for American Lawyers, Finance and Emerging Leaders.

Table of Contents:








Risk Allocation and Responsibilities
Modern Liability Theory
Insurance Coverage Types
Coinsurance
Subrogation and Waivers of Subrogation
Indemnification and Exculpatory Clauses
The "No Fault" Approach
Arbitration of Insurance Disputes
Final Thoughts