Law Commons^™

American Insurance Association V. Garamendi And Executive Preemption In Foreign Affairs, Brannon P. Denning, Michael D. Ramsey

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Insurance, Stephen M. Schatz, Stephen L. Cotter, Bradley S. Wolff

Mercer Law Review

Across the board, courts strictly applied insurance contracts as they were written. Typical of this survey year, insureds went zero for five in attempts to escape from their responsibility to read their policies. Public policy arguments did not seem to work. At the end of the survey year, the Georgia Court of Appeals further clarified the application of coverages in complex areas of insurance for "advertising injury" and "construction defects."

Strict Liability For Gatekeepers: A Reply To Professor Coffee, Frank Partnoy

University of San Diego Law and Economics Research Paper Series

This article responds to a proposal by Professor John C. Coffee, Jr. for a modified form of strict liability for gatekeepers. Professor Coffee’s proposal would convert gatekeepers into insurers, but cap their insurance obligations based on a multiple of the highest annual revenues the gatekeepers recently had received from their wrongdoing clients. My proposal, advanced in 2001, would allow gatekeepers to contract for a percentage of issuer damages, after settlement or judgment, subject to a legislatively-imposed floor. This article compares the proposals and concludes that a contractual system based on a percentage of the issuer’s liability would be preferable to …

West Virginia's Seemingly Eternal Struggle For Fiscally And Environmentally Adequate Coal Mining Reclamation Bonding Program, Craig B. Giffin

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court's Limitation Of Managed-Care Liability, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

This article summarizes and critiques the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Aetna Health Inc. v. Davila, which limited managed care organizations' liability for negligent decisions about the care of patients in private employer-sponsored health plans governed by ERISA. It contrasts the Court's dichotomous view of health benefit plans, in which insurers administer contracts and treating physicians make medical judgments, with the more complicated relationships that affect decisions about both coverage and treatment.

First Things First: Federal Courts Should Determine The Legal Status Of Lloyd's Of London Syndicate Before Deciding The Syndicate's Citizenship For Diversity Purposes, John M. Brust

Washington Law Review

Lloyd's of London provides a marketplace where groups of underwriters form syndicates to insure risk. The United States Circuit Courts of Appeals have split on the question of how to determine whether a federal court has diversity jurisdiction over a controversy involving Lloyd's syndicates. In a diversity action, each party must have diverse citizenship from all opposing parties. Circuit courts disagree about which diversity of citizenship test applies to suits involving Lloyd's syndicates. The Second, Third, and Sixth Circuits have applied the real party in interest test. This test looks only to the citizenship of the parties that have a …

Choosing Gatekeepers: The Financial Statement Insurance Alternative To Auditor Liabilty, Lawrence A. Cunningham

ExpressO

Positioned in a lively current debate concerning how to design auditor incentives to optimize financial statement auditing, this Article presents the more ambitious financial statement insurance alternative. This breaks from the existing securities regulation framework to draw directly on insurance markets and law. Based on upon an evaluation of major structural and policy-related features of the concept, the assessment prescribes a framework to permit companies, on an experimental-basis and with investor approval, to use financial statement insurance as an optional alternative to the existing model of financial statement auditing backed by auditor liability.

The financial statement insurance concept, pioneered by …

Known Unknowns: The Delusion Of Terrorism Insurance, Michelle Boardman

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Giving Pharmaceutical Manufacturers A Pill To Swallow: Why North Carolina Should Provide Discount Prescription Drugs To Non-Elderly Uninsured Citizens, Vaddrick Q. Parker

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Paid Family Leave, Gillian Lester

ExpressO

In this article I defend state provision of paid family leave. Such a program would allow workers to take compensated time off work to care for a newborn infant or ill family member. I normatively ground my claim in the argument that paid leave would allow women, who have historically performed a disproportionate share of family caregiving labor, to participate more fully in the paid workforce. This enhancement in labor force participation, I argue, would in turn increase women's independence and capacity to determine the conditions of their lives. In taking this position, I distinguish myself from those who would …

American Insurance Association V. Garamendi And Executive Preemption In Foreign Affairs, Brannon P. Denning, Michael D. Ramsey

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

In American Insurance Association v. Garamendi, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated California's Holocaust Victim Insurance Relief Act (HVIRA), which required insurance companies doing business in California to disclose all policies they or their affiliates sold in Europe between 1920 and 1945. According to the Court, the state's law unconstitutionally interfered with the foreign affairs power of the national government. The decision was easily overlooked in a Term filled with landmark cases dealing with affirmative action and sexual privacy. What coverage the case did receive emphasized its federalism aspects, and excited little reaction because the result seemed intuitively appropriate given the …

Pslra, Slusa, And Variable Annuities: Overlooked Side Effects Of A Potent Legislative Medicine, Michael J. Borden

Mercer Law Review

This Article highlights a harmful and far-reaching unintended consequence of two major pieces of securities litigation reform legislation1 that were passed as part of the Republican party's Contract with America in the mid-1990s. These reforms were justified, in part, on the grounds that they would benefit investors by improving disclosure of financial information by corporations. However, for many aggrieved investors, the effect of the legislation was just the opposite. Because of inadequate and misleading disclosures made by life insurance companies and their registered representatives, consumers were induced to purchase inappropriate investments carrying excessive fees that reduced the value of their …

War, Insurance And Some Problems Of Community, Carol Weisbrod

Faculty Articles and Papers

In War and Insurance (1914), Josiah Royce deals with several kinds of community, two obviously and one implicitly. The first is the community of interpretation, which he adapted from Peirce and used in the Problem of Christianity. The second is the Beloved or Universal Community, towards which this suggestion for the practical advancement of peace was headed. The third is the shattered or wounded community, implicit in War and Insurance in the form of the international community, which is injured by the nation that fires the first shot. This paper discusses these three communities against the background of several other …

Adverse Selection In Insurance Markets: An Exaggerated Threat, Peter Siegelman

Faculty Articles and Papers

The thesis of this Essay is that although theory demonstrates that adverse selection can occur, and some instances have certainly been documented, neither the theoretical models nor the empirical studies provide much support for its widespread importance in insurance markets. The nature of selection pressures turns out to be vastly more complicated than the rhetoric of courts and academic commentators would suggest. And while the economic theory of adverse selection in insurance markets has become enormously sophisticated, much of it is devoted to rarified analysis of the nature and existence of equilibria. It has thus managed to obscure some essential …

Voiding Auto Insurance Clauses For Violating Public Policy, Greg Munro

Faculty Journal Articles & Other Writings

This article addresses how a lawyer faced with an unambiguous auto insurance policy provision detrimental to his insured or claimant may analyze the provision to determine if it is potentially void and unenforceable.

From The People Who Brought You Safeco Field: Safeco Court Reporters!, Greg Munro

Faculty Journal Articles & Other Writings

This article questions the practice of an insurer involved in litigation contracting all of its deposition reporting services exclusively with a single court reporting service.

Insurance Coverage For Damages For Emotional Distress In Montana, Greg Munro

Faculty Journal Articles & Other Writings

This article has the twin purposes of exploring the circumstances in which Montana tort law recognizes emotional distress as compensable and examining the problem of securing insurance coverage of emotional distress damages.

The Politics Of Infertility: Recognizing Coverage Exclusions As Discrimination, Elizabeth Pendo

Articles

Infertility affects approximately ten percent of the reproductive-age population in the United States, and strikes people of every race, ethnicity and socio-economic level. It is recognized by the medical community as a disease, one with devastating physical, psychological, and financial effects. Nonetheless, comprehensive coverage of infertility treatments under employer-sponsored plans - where, like Jane, most Americans get health insurance - appears to be the exception rather than the rule. Can Jane sue for disability discrimination, sex discrimination, or both? While the answer - "it depends" - should not be surprising to anyone who has survived even a semester of law …

Keeping Employees' Trust: The Rocky Road Ahead For Pension Plan Trustees, 37 J. Marshall L. Rev. 903 (2004), Nikolay A. Ouzounov

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Cash Balance Plan: An Integral Component Of The Defined Benefit Plan Renaissance, 37 J. Marshall L. Rev. 753 (2004), Barry Kozak

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Erisa: Re-Thinking Firestone In Light Of Great-West - Implications For Standard Of Review And The Right To A Jury Trial In Welfare Benefit Claims, 37 J. Marshall L. Rev. 629 (2004), Donald T. Bogan

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lost Pension Money: Who Is Responsible? Who Benefits?, 37 J. Marshall L. Rev. 695 (2004), Ellen A. Bruce J.D., John Turner Ph.D.

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Insurance Binders Revisited, Peter N. Swisher

Law Faculty Publications

Temporary contracts of insurance-binders-protect the insured during the time between completion of the application and issuance of the policy. They are an accepted and necessary part of the insurance business, used in connection with a wide variety of insurance P7:oducts. But when alleged coverage under a binder is the subject of litigation, the results are often inconsistent and, sometimes, indefensible. This article provides a comprehensive discussion of binders, including the differences between standard form and manuscript binders, binding receipts in property and casualty insurance and conditional receipts in life insurance policies, the various kinds of conditional receipts, and otherwise. The …

State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. V. Campbell: Refining Bmw Of North America, Inc. V. Gore And Further Restricting Punitive Damages, Bridget E. Leonard

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Not So Peaceful Coexistence: Inherent Tensions In Addressing Tort Law Reform, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

As Professor Michael Green's comments trenchantly remind us, all of this has a familiar ring: insurers and tort defendants claim unfairly escalating liability, plaintiffs' lawyers and consumer groups counterattack, and (for the most part), insurers and defendants obtain some of the relief they seek. The tort reform victories are not so overwhelming as to completely unravel the historical rights of victims or the power of courts generally, but some constriction of rights inevitably occurs. During periods of quiescence, plaintiffs and consumers take back some lost territory through common law victories expanding claimant rights, or through specific legislation. Statutes that permitted …

The Denominator Blindness Effect: Accident Frequencies And The Misjudgment Of Recklessness, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

People seriously misjudge accident risks because they routinely neglect relevant information about exposure. Such risk judgments affect both personal and public policy decisions, e.g., choice of a transport mode, but also play a vital role in legal determinations, such as assessments of recklessness. Experimental evidence for a sample of 422 jury-eligible adults indicates that people incorporate information on the number of accidents, which is the numerator of the risk frequency calculation. However, they appear blind to information on exposure, such as the scale of a firm's operations, which is the risk frequency denominator. Hence, the actual observed accident frequency of …

The Foggy Road For Evaluating Punitive Damages: Lifting The Haze From The Bmw/State Farm Guideposts, Steven L. Chanenson, John Y. Gotanda

Working Paper Series

In light of increasing punitive damages awards, the United States Supreme Court formulated criteria for evaluating whether a punitive damages award is so unreasonably large that it violates substantive due process. Unfortunately, these "guideposts," which were first erected in BMW v. Gore and applied last term in State Farm v. Campbell, are difficult to use and have resulted in inconsistent decisions. Indeed, Justice Scalia stated that they "mark a road to nowhere." The authors argue that the problems with the guideposts can be fixed by refining the third guidepost, which compares the punitive damages award to the criminal (or civil) …

Fire, Metaphor, And Constitutional Myth-Making, Robert Tsai

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

From the standpoint of traditional legal thought, metaphor is at best a dash of poetry adorning lawyerly analysis, and at worst an unjustifiable distraction from what is actually at stake in a legal contest. By contrast, in the eyes of those who view law as a close relative of ordinary language, metaphor is a basic building block of human understanding. This article accepts that metaphor helps us to comprehend a court's decision. At the same time, it argues that metaphor plays a special role in the realm of constitutional discourse. Metaphor in constitutional law not only reinforces doctrinal categories, but …

Permitted But Not Intended: Boub V. Township Of Wayne, Municipal Tort Immunity In Illinois, And The Right To Local Travel, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 545 (2004), Bruce Epperson

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Insuring Liability Risks, Tom Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

Recent dramatic increases in prices for medical liability insurance, directors and officers insurance, and other lines of commercial liability insurance, together with the exit of some insurers from those lines of business, has placed liability insurance on the public agenda. At the same time, asbestos and environmental losses continue to mount under general liability insurance policies sold long ago, when no one could have predicted the extent or cost of such losses. In combination, these and other related events have raised serious concerns about the insurability of liability risks and have prompted calls for dramatic efforts to roll back the …