Kenneth Clark Schirle

K. Clark Schirle is a Partner at Butler Pappas. He has over 24 years of litigation experience. His practice areas include first-party property, business interruption, insurance coverage, products liability and international counseling and litigation.

Clark has extensive experience and expertise in litigating large, complex, multi-million dollar first-party property disputes across the country, including builder's risk claims, significant business interruption cases, and boiler and machinery claims. He has worked on claims involving concrete caissons, ports, underground tunnels, warehouse and distribution facilities, synfuel plants, coal mines, carpet mills, casinos, industrial furnaces, airports, high schools and commercial buildings. Clark is involved in all aspects of these claims, from providing initial advice as to coverage, to litigating the case to its conclusion via settlement, mediation, arbitration, trial and appeal.

Clark has extensive international experience and counsels European insurers on claims involving significant liability exposures in the United States.  He has also been involved in claims where foreign entities have been sued in the United States, including defending those actions on jurisdictional grounds.  Clark was also involved in litigating a claim where suits were pending in both London and the United States, and the London court issued an anti-suit injunction in favor of his clients, prohibiting the other party from proceeding with their action in the United States.  He has also mediated cases in London and Germany. 

Clark also has commercial litigation experience. He has litigated cases of all size and complexity, both for plaintiffs and defendants in federal and state courts, as well as bankruptcy courts representing trustees.  Substantive areas include products, banking, securities and commodities, employment, environmental, contracts and defamation.

Clark is a past Chair of the Property Insurance Law Committee, Tort, Trial & Insurance Practice Section, of the American Bar Association. He is also a member of the International and Insurance Coverage Litigation Committees of the Tort, Trial & Insurance Practice Section of the ABA and the Defense Research Institute. Clark is a frequent lecturer and author in the area of first-party property insurance. He has spoken at PLRB Large Loss Conferences, as well as at the Property Insurance Law Committee's CLE Meetings.

Clark received his Bachelor's degree in Political Science from the University of Illinois in 1985 (Phi Beta Kappa) and his law degree from the U.C.L.A. School of Law in 1988. He is a member of the Illinois Bar.