When I first saw this headline – “Doctor can sue insurance company for malicious prosecution” – in the local legal newspaper, my first thought was they are running a dog bites man story to open the new year. Why, after all, would an insurance company be immune from being sued for malicious prosecution? But when
Coverage Litigation
Ten Exciting Moments in Insurance Coverage Law, 2006
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Here is an article insurance coverage litigator Randy Maniloff is publishing in Mealey’s early next month discussing Randy’s picks for the ten most important insurance coverage decisions from across the country over the past year. The cases cover issues ranging from the absolute pollution exclusion to junk faxes, and a range of topics in-between.
While the…
Attorney’s Fee Awards, and the Duty to Indemnify
I have written before about the American Rule – which requires parties to a lawsuit, in the absence of a fee shifting statute or contractual agreement, to pay their own legal fees – and the exception under Massachusetts law that runs in favor of insureds who prevail in coverage cases against their insurers. The Supreme…
The Attorney-Client Privilege in Insurance Coverage and Bad Faith Lawsuits
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Like all of you, I am sure, I receive almost daily pitches in my in-box for seminars, podcasts, books and publications that promise to educate me on various topics that the pitchers have decided I must be interested in. Of course, these may be the same marketing wizards who send me twenty pitches a day…
Insurance Coverage Trial Exhibits
I added a new category today, Insurance Coverage Trials, as a place to collect useful tips, ideas and articles on trying insurance coverage cases that might be useful to readers of this blog who either try such cases or hire (and thereafter manage) lawyers who try such cases. What prompted this idea was a long…
Contract Law and Insurance Coverage
Although we treat insurance coverage cases as contract disputes, I am not altogether convinced that the law of contracts really is the animating principle behind insurance coverage decisions. Certainly, at the very least, one can’t take a gander at a standard contracts hornbook (that is lawyer talk for a book that provides a readers digest…
On Suing Insurance Companies
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Coverage Litigation
I spoke awhile back on the phenomenon of lawyers suing insurance companies just because that is where the money is. As a long time coverage and bad faith litigator, it has always been clear to me that there is at least some of that going on (which is not to suggest that no such…
Insurance Coverage and Personal Jurisdiction
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Coverage Litigation
Every state has its litigation tricks and traps, and we all know that there are some states that insurers would simply rather steer clear of. With this in mind, some insurers try to control what states’ litigation risks and regimes they will be exposed to by limiting the states in which they write business. But…
Attorney Fee Awards in Insurance Coverage Litigation
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Attorney Fee Awards, Coverage Litigation
When I was first starting out as a lawyer, stuck with research assignments that required figuring out all aspects of a particular state’s law on a particular issue, I always liked to begin by looking for a federal district court decision on the subject, because the federal court decisions had a tendency to include a…
Discovery of Reserves and Other Repetitive Events
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Coverage Litigation, Discovery
Here is a nice post on whether claim reserves are discoverable in insurance coverage or bad faith litigation, with some case law on the topic as well. The discovery of claim reserve information is one of those issues that is a consistent point of dispute from one coverage or bad faith action to the next.…