So this is interesting, from a couple of perspectives. The First Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a fairly comprehensive opinion addressing a number of issues in insurance coverage law in Massachusetts. The facts are a little salacious, and read more like a John Grisham plot than real life, but unfortunately, odd facts often underlie
Duty to Indemnify
A Reminder of Why Insurance Companies Matter
Its entirely politically incorrect in 2015, and rightfully so, to ever equate litigation (or football, or anything else) to war, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are historical lessons to be learned from military history and wonderful allusions and metaphors to be drawn from it. See, for instance, my early article on excessive…
On the Impact of Reservation of Rights Letters
I have written before on a number of occasions about the tripartite relationship that comes into play when an insurer retains defense counsel to represent an insured against a covered lawsuit. In particular, I have discussed my views that the relationship is nowhere near as complicated as many people make it out to be, and…
What Happens When ERISA and the Law of Insurance Coverage Collide?
Wow, I guess this is really Seventh Circuit week here, with, I guess, a particular focus on the jurisprudence of Judge Easterbrook, whose opinion in Baxter I discussed in my last post. This time, I turn to his decision from Wednesday in Federal Insurance Co. v. Arthur Andersen, which strikes right at the intersection…
Want to Learn More About the Tripartite Relationship?
One of the widest read and linked to posts I have written recently was this one here providing the law of the so-called tripartite relationship in thumb nail fashion. Interest in this topic surprises me to a certain extent, because very much the point of the post was that, despite all the seminars and publications…
Insurance Coverage, Tuberculosis, and that Guy on the Plane
You see, everything at the end of the day is about insurance. Risk sharing that allows smaller businesses to move forward with operations, plaintiffs’ decisions over who has enough insurance to warrant suing, even the economic dislocations of climate change – everything comes back to the insurance industry. Here’s a great example, and an amusing…
The Three Rules of the Tripartite Relationship
We’ve been a little ERISA heavy here for awhile now, somewhat to the detriment of the insurance litigation half of the blog’s title, simply because of the range of interesting events that have taken place under the ERISA rubric lately. While all that was going on, though, a particularly good collection of articles on different…
Me and LaRue, and Business Insurance Too
There is an article in Business Insurance magazine this week, the June 25th issue, on the Supreme Court accepting review of the LaRue decision, in which I am quoted. The article is here – subscription required – and if you read it, you will note that it ends on my comment that I expect the…
The Eleventh Most Important Insurance Coverage Decision of 2006
End of the year lists, to alter an old off color joke, are like opinions: everyone, it seems this time of year, has one. Some are superficial, silly and cursory, like this one here, and others, like Randy Maniloff’s list discussed in my last post, are substantive. For those of you who couldn’t get…
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…