Martin Checov

Partner

Martin Checov is a partner in O’Melveny’s San Francisco office, and currently serves as the Firm's General Counsel.  He has extensive experience in complex trial matters, having represented major domestic and foreign insurance carriers in disputes concerning coverage and related matters.  He has been recognized by Chambers USA as one of the country’s leading lawyers in this field, as well as by other general circulation publications.

On behalf of one of the major property and casualty companies in the United States, Martin participated extensively in protracted litigation over the nature and extent of insurance coverage for billions of dollars' worth of asbestos-related claims. Martin has also served as counsel for insurer defendants in a number of multi-party lawsuits involving insurance coverage for the cost of cleaning up environmental pollution under Superfund and similar state legislation, as well as for claims by individuals alleging personal injury caused by exposure to environmental contaminants. He has handled numerous insurance bad faith claims and questions of coverage for patent infringement, trademark infringement and other intellectual property claims, construction defect and product liability claims, first-party property losses and securities fraud and other class action litigation, as well as high-profile lawsuits under California’s Unfair Competition Law. In complex cases, Martin has a significant breadth of experience in the development and operation of data collection and management systems for vast volumes of discovery material. Martin has tried cases in state and federal courts, as well as before arbitration panels, and has successfully negotiated settlements before most of the prominent mediators in the Bay area.

In the pro bono arena, Martin was one of the Firm's lawyers responsible for preventing a now-bankrupt religious organization from evicting the tenants of a successful publicly-financed senior citizen complex in Pasadena for the purpose of converting it into condominiums at a huge private profit. He has also been recognized for his pro bono representation of a private, non-profit developer of affordable housing in San Francisco in litigation against neighboring property owners who challenged one of its projects under environmental and historic preservation strategies.  

Professional Activities

Admitted to Practice, U.S. District Court, Central, Northern, Eastern, and Southern Districts of California; U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit; California Supreme Court; U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Member, Federation of Insurance & Corporate Counsel; Litigation Section and Tort and Insurance Practice Section, American Bar Association; Environmental Law Section, State Bar of California; Bar Association of San Francisco; Los Angeles County Bar Association
Co-Author, Manual for Complex Insurance Coverage Litigation
Speaker, Risk management and legal ethics panels; insurance coverage; bad faith seminars; Bar meetings; tort reform panels