Peter Biging
2024-2025 President
Goldberg Segalla LLP
New York, NY

In my inaugural President’s Message, I want to start off by congratulating my predecessor, Dave Anderson, for a terrific year at the helm, and an incredible Annual Meeting. I don’t think anyone could have conceived that we’d be dealing with a hurricane in Atlanta! But the Annual Meeting went ahead with the weather fortunately having limited impact on the proceedings, and I couldn’t have been more impressed by the quality of the presentations. Next year the Annual Meeting will be in Las Vegas, not a noted hotbed of tropical storm activity. So hopefully the hurricane possibilities will be dramatically reduced!

With the start of our new PLDF year, I want to recognize our new PLDF Board members: Andrew Carroll, who will be assuming the role of Board Secretary; Jeff Brien of Minnesota Lawyers Mutual; Julie Jorgensen of Evans & Dixon, LLC; Liset Saunders of Hartford Steam Boiler; James Schu, of Kane, Pugh, Knoell, Troy & Kramer, LLP; Barbara Serafini, of Gallagher Bassett – GB Specialty; and Nick Spano, of Beazley. I have been privileged throughout my tenure on the PLDF Board to work with some incredible people. And this promises to be as exceptional a group as we’ve ever had serve on the PLDF Board. I look forward to working with each of them, and our holdover Board members, including President-Elect Megan Zurn and Treasurer Michelle Arbitrio, to deliver another outstanding year for our members.

We have some big plans for the year ahead, with hopes to deliver even more content to our members. We are, starting with a webinar on November 19th, featuring two leading lawyers professional liability claims executives, Megan Zurn of AXA XL, and Ryan Kelly, of Berkley Select, along with the Director of Risk Management for the EPIC Law Firm Group, Melissa Demmon. These LPL insiders will be offering their insights into what can be expected to drive lawyers professional liability claims in 2025 and beyond. We hope this is the first of many webinars we will be offering PLDF membership this coming year, along with our regular PLDQ quarterly issues. We are also hoping this year to devote one of our PLDQ issues to a Survey of Significant Developments in Professional Liability Law. We will be asking each of our Committee Chairs to solicit contributions from their members of summaries of key case law and legislative developments to use in this special issue.

In addition to our plans for continuing to deliver valuable content, we also hope to make a major push to grow our membership, which has seen dynamic growth both in terms of industry members and defense counsel since its humble beginnings 16 years ago. I ask that you please spread the word about PLDF to your colleagues and the people you regularly work with in the professional liability defense universe, and let them know about all the organization has to offer. I often hear from senior professional liability claims executives about how the plaintiff’s bar works collaboratively to identify successful strategies, share them, and build on them. PLDF is here to provide a forum for doing the same thing on the defense side. In the year ahead, I look forward to doing my part to keep up and build upon the great traditions of PLDF. I thank you all for your support as we move forward.

Looking at Dave Anderson’s President’s Message last year, I couldn’t help but be struck by how he repeatedly emphasized his gratitude for being selected to serve as PLDF President, for the incredible success of the PLDF Annual Meeting that had preceded his ascension to the office at this time last year, for the work of the President who had preceded him (Kathleen Buck of MLM), and for the stellar efforts of everyone involved in PLDF, who work every day to make it what it is. I too am extraordinarily humbled and grateful for this opportunity, particularly to Dave, Kathleen and the PLDF Presidents who came before for their leadership and the standard of excellence they have set for me to try to match,. I couldn’t be more excited to get started.

Peter Biging is an accomplished trial and appellate attorney with more than 30 years of experience as a litigator in the state and federal courts of New York. His practice focuses on litigation involving directors and officers, financial institutions and defense of management and professional liability claims, including the defense of a variety of professionals against errors and omissions claims, labor and employment practices litigation, commercial litigation, municipal liability litigation, and professional liability coverage work. His work as a litigator includes defending a variety of financial service professionals, including insurance agents and brokers, investment advisers, accountants, broker-dealers and their registered representatives. He also regularly represents lawyers, real estate and title agents, and a variety of miscellaneous professionals. Peter regularly handles complex, high-stakes commercial litigations and claims involving allegations of fraud or malfeasance, as well as litigations of non-solicitation/non-compete disputes. A partner in the firm's Manhattan offices, he heads up the Goldberg Segalla metro area Management and Professional Liability practice, and is Co-chair of the M&PL practice group nationally.

Peter is widely recognized as an authority on D&O, management and professional liability, E&O, EPL, and professional liability coverage issues. In addition to regularly writing and presenting to national audiences on these topics, he is active in a number of organizations devoted to the education and development of lawyers involved in management & professional liability defense work, including his current role as a member of the Board of the Professional Liability Defense Federation (PLDF) (for which he currently serves as treasurer), various posts within the American Bar Association’s Tort, Trial & Insurance Practice Section (TIPS) (including his forthcoming ascension to Chair of the Editorial Board of The Brief, the TIPS flagship magazine), and his active participation in the Professional Liability Underwriting Society (PLUS), and the Claim and Litigation Management Alliance (CLM), for whom he has written numerous articles, given numerous presentations, and served on several committees. He is regularly recognized as a New York metro area Super Lawyer in Professional Liability Defense, is AV rated by Martindale Hubbell as having the highest levels of skill and integrity, and has been selected a Top 100 Bet the Company Litigator.