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
Homeowners Insurance
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…
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…
Is It Just Plain Rational for Insurers to Pull Back from Coastal Markets?
Anyone interested in the topics of this blog is probably familiar with the media coverage of homeowners insurers raising rates and/or simply withdrawing from writing homeowners insurance in coastal regions, including not just in the traditional hurricane regions of the south but up through New England as well. Many stories are replete with sturm und…
All You Need to Know About Anti-Concurrent Cause Policy Language, Hurricane Katrina and Insurance Coverage Law
What is the sound of the internet clapping? Who knows. A healthy round of applause is due, though, for prominent insurance coverage blogger David Rossmiller, who has spent the last several months on his blog -aptly named the Insurance Coverage Law Blog – detailing and dissecting the insurance coverage disputes arising in the aftermath…
Risk Transfer, Major League Baseball and Insurance
It’s a truism that insurance greases the skids for the entire economy; as a risk sharing mechanism, it allows businesses and individuals to move forward knowing they won’t bear the entire cost if something goes wrong. David Rossmiller’s ongoing coverage at his blog of the response of coastal states to a decrease in available homeowners…
Waterfront Property and the Costs of Homeowners Insurance
Rising home insurance costs in beachfront areas is a trendy topic, and the Boston Globe weighed in on it yesterday, in this article discussing consumers on Cape Cod joining together to question the industry’s rate setting. The article’s lead (or lede, as I have learned from former newspaper reporter turned lawyer and blogger David Rossmiller)…
Hurricane Katrina Coverage Litigation
Unlike the postman (neither sleet nor rain, etc.), I am easily diverted from my appointed rounds. This is another way of saying that contrary to what I said in my last post, I am not returning right away to a run down of a handful of interesting ERISA decisions handed down in the First Circuit…
Hurricanes and Homeowners Insurance
Coastal Homeowners Insurance – Distorting the Market or a FAIR Complaint?
Here’s an interesting story today about the Massachusetts Attorney General challenging the rate increases that have been approved for the state’s homeowners’ insurer of last resort, the FAIR plan. The problem is one that is riling coastal homeowners’ insurance markets up and down the eastern seaboard, namely the rate increases being imposed by insurers –…