Okay, I mentioned on Friday that I had come across some other interesting blogs and sites over the last few weeks that I wanted to pass along, and that I would do so over the next few days. I jumped off track on doing that right off the bat with this morning’s post on insurance
Insureds, Prior Knowledge and Insurance Coverage
One of the more ambiguous and gray areas in insurance coverage law is the question of when an insured is or should be aware that a claim is on its way. The law recognizes that this can certainly occur at some point before the insured actually is handed suit papers by a process server, but
ERISA, Subprime Lending and Mortgage Meltdown
One of the great things about writing this blog is that the technology of blogging – like links to other blogs and so-called trackbacks, showing who else on the internet is quoting a post – brings writers, topics and other bloggers onto my radar screen who I would otherwise miss out on. That cumbersome, semi-tech
Let My People Go, or Something Like That: Granting Parties Greater Freedom to Construct an Arbitration Regime
There was an interesting post yesterday on the Wall Street Journal Law Blog – which by its topics provides a nice little overview of the zeitgeist of the legal world at any given moment – on arbitration as an alternative to litigation. The post discusses a column from the Financial Times supporting the growth of
Pay or Play Acts: There’s No Free Lunch
I have written before that the underlying structural problem with fair share and similar acts, like the Massachusetts Health Care Reform Act, that seek to mandate the provision of health insurance by employers is twofold: first, they play at the margins of a problem that is fundamentally about the base economics of health care
A Primer on Fiduciary Status Under ERISA
I liked the recent opinion in Bonilla v. Bella Vista Hospital, Inc., out of the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico (not available online from the court, but here’s a Lexis cite for it: 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 79939) for really only one reason, namely this terrific overview of the law of
Bad Faith, Sureties, Insurance Coverage, and Punitive Damages: Who Gets the Check When the Misconduct Ends?
Here’s a neat little story out of the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly today on a Massachusetts Appeals Court decision holding that the surety on a construction contract does not cover, under the construction bond it issued, punitive damages awarded for the bad faith conduct of a principal of the construction company covered under the bond. Although
Is Subprime the New Stock Drops?
The consensus in the legal community, and I don’t think it is just because they are looking hopefully for a new flow of work, has for awhile now been that fund investment losses resulting from exposure to the subprime mortgage mess will eventually generate substantial ERISA related litigation. There are plenty of avenues for these
Suicide Exclusions Under ERISA Plans, and the Impact, If Any, of the Standard of Review
There’s an interesting, if brief, ERISA case out of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts decided last week that enforced a suicide exclusion in an employer provided supplemental life insurance program. The court found that the evidence in the administrative record supported the administrator’s determination that the employee had committed suicide
Why Preemption?
If, like me, you are fascinated not just by ERISA but by history and politics, this two part law review article, by James Wooten at the University at Buffalo Law School, on how ERISA preemption came to be, looks to be a must read. Here’s the abridged version of the story detailed in his articles: