In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers raised a potentially disastrous question for a maritime terminal operator called Lafarge North America. An enormous barge that should have been moored at a Lafarge terminal had been found bumping up against a house on the land side of the Mississippi River levee that protected New Orleans’s Ninth Ward. An Army Corps spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that it was possible the barge had caused a breach in the levee, resulting in the flooding that devastated that area of the city.
Lafarge rushed to action, hiring mass torts specialists at Goodwin Procter and a New Orleans firm called Chaffe McCall with a substantial maritime practice as its counsel. It also brought in Holland & Knight to conduct an investigation of how the barge slipped its mooring. On the day it engaged these firms, Lafarge informed its primary insurance carrier, New York Marine and General Insurance Company (NYMAGIC) only that it had hired Holland & Knight for an investigation. It was not until almost two weeks later that it told the insurer it had also retained Goodwin and Chaffe.
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