I have maintained a healthy interest in cybercrimes, cyber risks and related liability exposures, for at least two reasons central to the topics of this blog. The first is that, other than credit card companies, probably no one holds more protected personal information than the entities involved with ERISA plans, from health insurers to mutual
Claims Made Policies
Back to the Future: Insurance Coverage Law from Asbestos to Cyber Risks
This is a very fun – if you can use that word for insurance disputes – discussion of the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court determining what trigger applies under insurance policies issued to insureds sued for asbestos related injuries. Its partly fun because it replays a highly contentious and, for all involved, expensive chapter in American legal history…
Depends on What You Mean By “Related”
Well, here’s a story on an unpublished Ninth Circuit decision on the impact on the duty to defend of related claims provisions in claims made insurance policies. Although policies vary in the language and structure they use to accomplish it, these provisions essentially declare a claim made during a policy period to be linked to…
Deconstructing the Language of Insurance Policies
I have been thinking a lot recently about the development and history of particular aspects of insurance policy language, and how they reflect the continuing efforts of drafters to take language that can often be imprecise and refine it to more accurately reinforce what the insurer actually intends to take on as a covered risk.
If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, is it a claim?
When is a demand, or a threat, or another communication from a potential claimant a claim? The answer matters, particularly in corporate insurance programs built upon claims made policies. Normally, courts either apply the specific definition of the term claim contained in the policy at issue or else, in the case of a policy that…