Horst, who helped found Nelson Levine in 2000 and served as its managing partner from 2003 to 2008, joined the Morrisville, Pa.-based firm as a partner in its litigation section, focusing his practice on first-party property bad-faith work.
Horst now works out of the firm's Doylestown, Pa., office.
Bonnie S. Stein, co-chair of Curtin & Heefner's litigation section, said the firm first discussed hiring Horst years ago when he left the Law Offices of Jonathan Wheeler, a Philadelphia plaintiffs firm.
At the time, however, what Horst was looking for and what the firm had to offer didn't mesh, Stein said.
"He had come out of a plaintiffs firm; he wanted to be in the city; we weren't in the city," she said.
Horst eventually became a partner at Post & Schell, but he and the attorneys at Curtin & Heefner kept in touch, according to Stein.
Before Horst left Post & Schell to start Nelson Levine, he again met with Curtin & Heefner.
"I believe our conversation at the time was, 'Do you want to be a big fish in a little pond or a little fish in big pond?'" Stein recalled. "I believe his quote to us was that he wanted to be a big fish in a big pond, but the best way for him to do that was to stay in the city."
Fast-forward more than a decade, however, and circumstances finally were right for Horst and Curtin & Heefner to come together.
STEPHEN J. MCCONNELL
In the spring, Reed Smith hired former Dechert partner Stephen J. McConnell to the firm's life sciences and health industry group in Philadelphia.
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