Christopher N. Mammel, Esq.

Biography

Christopher Mammel has practiced in the field of property and casualty insurance coverage since the early 1980s. He is licensed in Colorado, Florida, and Illinois and has represented parties in lawsuits in more than 15 states. For most of his career, he has focused his practice on property insurance disaster recovery. His practice in Colorado is focused on large commercial hail and other property damage claims. Following the 2004 and 2005 hurricanes in Florida, he represented numerous policyholders, primarily community associations and commercial parties, in large damage claims and lawsuits against most of the insurance companies writing commercial and commercial residential insurance in Florida. He tried cases and negotiated numerous multi-million dollar settlements in those cases. He later prosecuted for unfair claims practices resulting from some of the claims.

Mr. Mammel has acted as trial and appellate counsel in numerous commercial and insurance coverage claims. As representative examples, he was appellate counsel in a construction defect case enforcing a multimillion-dollar jury verdict on a home on Marco Island, which was settled by the contractor’s liability insurance carrier shortly after oral argument. Acting as trial and appellate counsel for a Hialeah condominium association after a Hurricane Wilma loss, he succeeded in upholding the trial court’s order compelling appraisal that had been appealed by the insurance carrier.

The subsequent appraisal resulted in a substantial award for his client to replace roofs, sliding glass doors, and windows damaged in the hurricane. He resolved the litigation to enforce the award with a settlement allowing the association to rebuild its property. Mr. Mammel represented another condominium association comprising a 19-building complex in Brevard County, Florida to enforce an appraisal award encompassing damage to roofs, building exteriors, sliding glass doors and windows, which also settled in the midst of an appeal. He represented another condominium association in a Palm Beach County case to defeat an insurance company’s efforts to avoid a substantial appraisal award—and successfully enforced the award. An ensuing statutory bad faith case was settled for a substantial additional amount.

In 2018, Mr. Mammel tried a residential claim alleging damages from Reactive Chinese Drywall to a home in Tampa and received a jury verdict awarding his client the full damages sought, and attorneys’ fees. The case settled shortly after trial, and is the first known plaintiff’s verdict concerning first party coverage under a property insurance policy anywhere in the country.

In other parts of the country, Mr. Mammel represented the plaintiff/policyholder in a third-party liability insurance case that began with a reported decision in the federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals citing several insurance companies for violating duties of good faith owed the insured. The case culminated in multimillion-dollar settlements for his client. In a case initially filed in Colorado, he represented one of the largest gold mining companies in the world in several lawsuits filed over the discovery of a 7 million ounce gold reserve in Nevada (when gold was $325/oz.), which culminated in a six-week federal jury trial. His client received a defense verdict.

Mr. Mammel has been selected as a Super Lawyer and is rated AV Preeminent by Martindale-Hubbell, the highest possible rating from a system based upon review by his peers for legal ability and impeccable ethical conduct. He is a dedicated policyholder advocate.