At this point, I think we are entering a new era in Massachusetts law concerning insurance coverage, one different than any I have seen before in my decades of litigating such cases in the Commonwealth. In this brave new world, policies are apparently applied as written, and insureds cannot just claim ambiguities or that they
Reasonable Expectations Doctrine
Life Insurance, Good Health, and the Reasonable Expectations Doctrine
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Wow, here is a great insurance coverage story out of the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, concerning a state trial court decision over the impact of a particular clause in a life insurance policy. The case involved a life insurance policy containing a clause under which the policy only became effective if the insured was in…
Massachusetts Insurance Coverage Law in a Nutshell
I wanted to pass on to you a case out of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio that was issued about the time I was trying a patent infringement case last month, and which I wasn’t able to comment on then as a result. With a little more time…
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…
Pollution Exclusions and the Reasonable Expectations Doctrine
There is an interesting decision out of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court concerning the application of a policy endorsement and its mirror image exclusion to coverage of an oil leak from an oil delivery truck. The spill occurred while the truck was parked overnight, in between two separate days of delivering oil. The Supreme Judicial…