Ms. Wilewicz is a member of the firm’s Insurance Coverage Practice Group and its Litigation Department, where she handles all aspects of coverage analysis and litigation in State and Federal Courts. She has considerable experience in first party, third party liability, and excess coverages, as well as in reinsurance matters. She specializes in complex environmental coverage, including pollution, lead, asbestos, and other types of toxic torts, as well as matters involving cyber liability and e-discovery. She litigates a variety of coverage matters for a number of national and international insurance companies, and serves as exclusive New York State coverage counsel to a major regional carrier. She is also regularly engaged in litigation defense and has experience in handling all aspects of trial preparation and appeals in a wide range of matters, including construction liability, premises liability, zoning, municipal liability, Superfund/CERCLA litigation, and mass torts.
Ms. Wilewicz authors a bi-weekly column on Federal Circuit Court coverage cases, with a focus on environmental coverage issues for the firm’s electronic newsletter, Coverage Pointers. She also runs Hurwitz Fine’s in-house CLE program. Prior to joining Hurwitz Fine P.C., she worked in the coverage department of a large New York City area law firm and, upon moving back Upstate, served as a coverage attorney and Director of Continuing Legal Education for another midsize Buffalo-based firm.
A graduate from the two-and-a-half-year accelerated program at St. John’s University School of Law, she previously earned her bachelor’s degree in linguistics and psychology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where she graduated summa cum laude. While practicing law, Ms. Wilewicz also went on to earn a master’s degree in adult education at Pennsylvania State University, with a certificate in distance education.
Ms. Wilewicz currently serves as the Chair for the Excess, Surplus Lines & Reinsurance Committee (ESLR) of the American Bar Association’s (ABA’s) Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section (TIPS). She is also a Vice Chair to the Insurance Coverage Litigation General Committee of TIPS. Ms. Wilewicz also sits on the ABA’s General Committee Board Standing Committee, which oversees all of TIPS’ 32 general committees. She currently serves on the Editorial Board of The Brief, the TIPS magazine for the ABA’s 30,000+ members who practice in tort and insurance law. She is also a member of the Erie County Bar Association, the Women’s Bar Association of the State of New York, and the New York State Bar Association’s Torts, Insurance, and Compensation Law Section. She previously served as the Chair of the Long Tail Toxic Torts SLG of the Insurance Law Committee for the Defense Research Institute (DRI). Within Hurwitz Fine, Ms. Wilewicz is the Chair of the Women’s Forum, a group intended to provide the firm’s women lawyers with social and professional opportunities to build sustaining careers and strengthen relationships among colleagues and peers in the community.
Ms. Wilewicz is also a member of the International Association of Forensic Linguists, which studies the language of the law, including how laws and legal documents are written, as well as how the words used by the police or lawyers influence witnesses or juries. She is also a New York State Real Estate Broker, and is fluent in Polish and conversant in French.
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