Barry Robert Ostrager

Barry R. Ostrager is a senior litigation Partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP and from 1999 to 2011 was Head of the Litigation Department.  He has tried dozens of cases and argued scores of appeals throughout the country and has been prominently involved in many high-profile securities, anti-trust, and commercial cases.  He was lead trial counsel for Swiss Re in the highly publicized insurance coverage dispute involving the World Trade Center tragedy which resulted in a unanimous jury verdict in favor of Swiss Re, and lead counsel for Hanwha in a multi-billion dollar dispute with the Korean government that was the subject of a multi-week trial.  Mr. Ostrager successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court the closely followed Epstein v. Matsushita case that arose out of Matsushita's successful tender offer for MCA, Inc.  Last year, he successfully argued again before the Supreme Court the Travelers v. Bailey case, which resolved important issues relating to the rights of settling insurers in asbestos-related bankruptcy.  

Mr. Ostrager has successfully tried to verdict five billion plus dollar cases, including the successful representation of Andersen Consulting against a $14 billion claim by Arthur Andersen in connection with Andersen Consulting’s successful bid to win a separation without cost from the Andersen Worldwide organization in the largest ICC arbitration in history.  Mr. Ostrager also successfully represented J.P. Morgan Chase in a breach of guarantee contract action against Motorola in which J.P. Morgan Chase obtained a $370 million verdict against Motorola.  In July, 2010, Mr. Ostrager was one of the trial counsel who produced a $110 million jury verdict in Arizona State court after a six week trial.  In 1993 Mr. Ostrager was lead trial and appellate counsel for Paramount Communications in the widely publicized QVC v. Paramount tender offer litigation. 

Of late, Mr. Ostrager has been involved in connection with a number of high profile cases including the representation of the America’s Cup holder and trials scheduled to take place this Spring and Summer for Ingersoll Rand and a member of the Jordanian Royal Family.

Mr. Ostrager has been prominently involved in supervising the firm's major insurance and reinsurance practices in both its New York and Los Angeles offices.  He has been lead trial counsel in more than a dozen major insurance coverage cases, including Shell Oil Co. v. Winterthur Swiss Insurance Company, a multi-billion dollar environmental insurance coverage dispute in which the jury returned a verdict for the insurers after a sixteen-month trial.  

Mr. Ostrager is co-author of the Handbook on Insurance Coverage Disputes (Aspen Law & Business 2010), a widely-used, three-volume treatise now in its fifteenth edition.  Mr. Ostrager is also a frequent lecturer on federal securities law and insurance law. 

Mr. Ostrager has been a member of the Firm since 1980.  He received his B.A. from City College of the City University of New York in 1968 and his M.A. in 1973.  He earned his J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1972 and served as a judicial clerk in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.  Mr. Ostrager is admitted in the New York and California State Bars; the United States District Courts for the Southern, Eastern and Northern Districts of New York, Connecticut, the Western District of Texas and the Northern and Central Districts of California; the United States Courts of Appeal for the Second, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth and District of Columbia Circuits; the International Court of Trade and the United States Supreme Court.  He is also a member of the Federal Bar Council, the New York City Bar Association, the American Bar Association, and the American Law Institute.