A
graduate of Northwestern University School of Law, Peter Broeman was for twenty-one years an associate and partner in the
New York City firm of Bigham Englar Jones & Houston, where he represented Underwriters at Lloyds and leading American
insurers in matters involving financial institutions’ insurance, fidelity law and insurance coverage. Among many other
matters, he handled financial bond claims totaling $140,000,000 against insurers resulting from the demise of City Federal
Savings Bank, the largest savings and loan east of the Mississippi River to fail during the savings and loan crisis of the
late 1980’s. He is the author of a number of articles on insurance law, including "An Overview of the Financial
Institution Bond, Standard Form No. 24," 110 Banking L.J. 439 (1993), which has been cited as authoritative four times
by United States Courts of Appeal as well as the Court of Chancery of Delaware.
Mr. Broeman has been interested in international law since law school. He took his first position after graduating as an assistant
manager in the French Tax and Corporate Services Department of Price Waterhouse & Co.’s Paris office, chiefly working
on tax and transactional issues. He followed that with a year-long certificate program in European Community law (now offered
as an LL.M.) at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium and then joined Bigham Englar in New York City, initially representing
foreign insurers of both American and foreign financial institutions and later handling other types of commercial litigation.
He is fluent in French, familiar with Europe, and has worked with clients and lawyers from numerous countries for over three
decades.
Opening a New
Jersey office for Bigham Englar in the late 1980’s, Mr. Broeman became active in the New Jersey State Bar Association,
serving three terms as Chair of its Section on International Law and Organizations and editing the book, New Jersey: a Basic
Guide for Foreign Businesses, published by the Bar Association in 1991. He was instrumental in persuading the New Jersey Legislature
to enact the Uniform Foreign Country Money Judgment Recognition Act in 1997, for which he was awarded the Bar Association’s
Distinguished Legislative Service award in that year. Since 1992 he has co-authored the chapter "Special Considerations
in Cases Involving Foreign Parties" in the New Jersey Federal Civil Practice Handbook (3rd edition 2008, New Jersey Law
Journal Books, with annual supplements through 2012).
Peter Broeman has represented shareholders in intracorporate disputes and insurance agents in disputes with insurers over
premium collections. As an example of his international cases, he represented a leading European travel company in an action
against its New York-based general agent for failure to use its best efforts in marketing the plaintiff’s product. "Best
efforts" cases are notoriously hard to win. Mr. Broeman achieved a substantial settlement after intense pre-trial litigation.
As in a number of his cases, both in commercial litigation and fidelity insurance, the case involved the sophisticated use
of a forensic accountant as an expert witness in order to achieve a successful result.
