Max B. Chester focuses his practice on litigation and arbitration of domestic and international commercial business disputes and government enforcement actions, primarily in the areas of insurance and reinsurance, financial fraud, antitrust and FCPA. He is a partner in the firm’s Insurance and Reinsurance Litigation Practice Group and the International Arbitration Team.

Max has participated in over 10 trials and final evidentiary arbitration hearings to date. As a junior associate, Max was a member of a trial team that represented a New York-based insurer in three separate arbitrations against U.S. and European reinsurers. The arbitration hearings lasted several weeks in each case, and he assisted in all aspects of the hearings and conducted direct examinations of several witnesses. In 2006, Max was a member of a jury trial team in Seattle, King County (Washington) Superior Court, representing a large Swiss pharmaceutical company against its former head of research and development who failed to disclose an invention. The matter settled favorably two weeks into trial. He conducted a one-day bench trial as a senior associate in the Immigration Court in Chicago, representing an Iranian refugee seeking political asylum in the U.S. The court ruled in the client’s favor. In 2010, Max was second chair in a jury trial in federal court in Green Bay. This was a test case brought by a credit union against the IRS, arguing income derived from sale of various financial and insurance products was not subject to income taxes. The jury returned a verdict in client’s favor. Max was also second chair in a week-long reinsurance arbitration defending a European reinsurer against claims for indemnity under a finite treaty, and the panel ultimately ruled in client’s favor. As a partner, Max was co-lead counsel in a multi-day bench trial in Washburn County (Wisconsin) Circuit Court for several subsidiaries of a holding company, whose creditor argued the debt belonged to the holding company, making the subsidiaries insolvent. The court ruled in client’s favor. Max was co-lead counsel in a multi-week reinsurance arbitration on behalf of a state entity that insured birth-related injuries and sought tens of millions from its reinsurer pursuant to a mandatory commutation provision in the treaty; in the end, the arbitration panel awarded the client a substantial sum. Max was also co-lead counsel in a week­long reinsurance arbitration, representing a U.S. seller of insurance business that sought to recover excise taxes from the foreign buyer of the business, and the panel ruled against the client. Max’s latest trial was a multi-day arbitration hearing where he again served as co-lead counsel, representing a retrocedent that sought indemnity from its retrocessionaire for Covid-19 related business interruption losses. The arbitrator ruled in client’s favor.