Hurricanes, Floods, and Fires, Oh My!: How to Improve Discovery in a Flood of Post-Disaster Property Insurance Lawsuits

Brittany Kauffman is a Senior Director, overseeing IAALS’ programmatic objectives and strategy with expertise in civil justice reform at the state and federal levels.

Kauffman has worked with state and federal courts, rules committees, civil justice task forces, and bar organizations around the country, serving as a facilitator, expert liaison, and consultant on civil justice reform efforts. She provides legal and empirical research and analysis to assist in the development of recommendations, as well as support for implementation—all toward the goal of making our civil justice system accessible, efficient, and relevant to the people whom it serves. Examples include Kauffman’s work with the Conference of Chief Justice’s Civil Justice Improvements Committee, which developed a set of 13 recommendations for transforming civil justice in our state courts, and the American College of Trial Lawyer’s Task Force on Discovery and Civil Justice.

Kauffman joined IAALS in the Spring of 2012 after having practiced with Arnold & Porter, LLP, where she worked in appellate, environmental, natural resources, and Indian law. She was honored in 2009 as a nominee for the Colorado Lawyers Committee Individual of the Year Award for her pro bono efforts.

Prior to her work at Arnold & Porter, she served as a law clerk for the Honorable Judge Paul J. Kelly, Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

Kauffman received her J.D. from the University of Colorado School of Law, where she was a member of Order of the Coif and a Breitenstein Scholar. Kauffman obtained her undergraduate degree from Colorado College, where she graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Chemistry and a minor in Environmental Studies and was a Boettcher Scholar.

Jennifer D. Bailey was a judge of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court, Civil Division, in Florida. She was elected to this position on November 3, 1992 and took office in 1993. She ran unopposed and was retained in the August 24, 2010 primary to a six-year term that ended on January 2, 2017.

Bailey has taught for the Florida New Judge’s College, Florida’s Advanced Judicial Studies College, Conference of Circuit Court Judges, and Florida Bar. She was the dean of the Florida College of Advanced Judicial Studies from 2000 to 2005.

She joined the circuit court in 1993. She has also served as an associate judge on the 4th District Court of Appeal (1999, 2000, 2002, 2004) and the 2nd District Court of Appeal (2006).

Bailey received her B.A. degree (in Journalism) from the University of Georgia in 1980 and her J.D. degree from the University of Georgia in 1983.

Judge Lee H. Rosenthal was appointed a United States District Court Judge for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division in 1992. Before then, she was a partner at Baker & Botts in Houston, Texas, where she tried civil cases and handled appeals in the state and federal courts. She received her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Chicago and served as law clerk to Chief Judge John R. Brown, United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

In addition to serving as a district court judge for over 22 years, Judge Rosenthal has been invited to sit by designation with courts of appeals around the country, including the Second, Third, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits. Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Judge Rosenthal as a member of the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Civil Rules in 1996. She served as chair of the Class Actions subcommittee during the development of the 2003 amendments to Rule 23. Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Judge Rosenthal chair of the Civil Rules Committee in 2003. In 2007, Chief Justice Roberts appointed Judge Rosenthal to chair the Judicial Conference Committee on the Rules of Practice and Procedure, which coordinates and oversees the work of the Advisory Committees for the Civil, Criminal, Evidence, Appellate, and Bankruptcy Rules. That appointment was extended through October 1, 2011.

Judge Rosenthal has been chief judge of the Southern District since November 2016. The Fifth Circuit judges selected her as their District Judge representative on the Judicial Conference of the United States for a 3-year term beginning October 2016.

Judge Rosenthal is the 1st Vice President of The American Law Institute, where she also serves as an Adviser on the project to revise the Model Penal Code sections on sexual assault and on the Conflict of Laws Restatement. She was an Adviser for the Employment Law project and the Aggregate Litigation project and was an Adviser for the Transnational Rules of Civil Procedure project. In 2007, she was elected to the ALI Council and from 2011 to 2016 was Chair of the Program Committee.

Judge Rosenthal has taught, written, and lectured extensively, concentrating on topics in complex litigation and civil procedure, including class actions and electronic discovery. She has taught Federal Courts at the University of Houston Law Center and lectured or taught recently at Yale, Duke, Cornell, Syracuse, Louisiana State University, and University of Texas law schools. She also teaches a summer class for state, federal, and international judges at Duke University School of Law.

Judge Rosenthal served the allowable term on the Board of Trustees of Rice University in Houston, Texas from 2008 to 2016, chairing the Academic Affairs Committee. She currently serves on the Board of the Baylor College of Medicine, and is on the Duke University School of Law Board of Visitors. She has served as president of the District Judges’ Association of the Fifth Circuit. Judge Rosenthal is the 2012 recipient of the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Award for Professionalism and Ethics given by the American Inns of Court and is a 3-time recipient of the Trial Judge of the Year Award from the Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists. In 2014, Judge Rosenthal was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Mr. Barkett is a partner at the law firm of Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P. in its Miami office. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame (B.A. Government, 1972, summa cum laude) and the Yale Law School (J.D. 1975) and served as a law clerk to the Honorable David W. Dyer on the old Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Barkett is an adjunct professor of law at the University of Miami School of Law. He is also the recipient of one of the 2011 Burton Awards for Legal Achievement honoring lawyers for distinguished legal writing. Mr. Barkett has been a member of the Advisory Committee for Civil rules of the Federal Judicial Conference since 2012, and is now a member of the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility.

Mr. Barkett has, over the years, been a commercial litigator (contract and corporate disputes, employment, trademark, and antitrust), environmental litigator (CERCLA, RCRA, and toxic tort), and, for the past several years, a peacemaker and problem solver, serving as an arbitrator, mediator, facilitator, or allocator in a variety of environmental, commercial, or reinsurance contexts. He is a certified mediator under the rules of the Supreme Court of Florida and the Southern and Middle Districts of Florida and a member of the London Court of International Arbitration and the International Council for Commercial Arbitration, and serves on the AAA and ICDR roster of neutrals, the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution’s “Panel of Distinguished Neutrals,” and the National Roster of Environmental Dispute Resolution and Consensus Building Professionals maintained by the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution. He has served or is serving as a neutral in scores of matters involving in the aggregate more than $4 billion. He has conducted or is conducting commercial domestic and international arbitrations under AAA, LCIA, ICDR, UNCITRAL, and CPR rules and has conducted ad hoc arbitrations.

In November 2003, he was appointed by the presiding judge to serve as the Special Master to oversee the implementation and enforcement of the 1992 Consent Decree between the United States and the State of Florida relating to the restoration of the Florida Everglades. He also consults with major corporations on the evaluation of legal strategy and risk in commercial disputes, conducts independent investigations where such services are needed, and works with other lawyers on questions of legal ethics.