Insurance Law Commons^™

The Law And Politics Of Ransomware, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

What do Lady Gaga, the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, the city of Valdez in Alaska, and the court system of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul all have in common? They have all been victims of ransomware attacks, which are growing both in number and severity. In 2016, hackers perpetrated roughly four thousand ransomware attacks a day worldwide, a figure which was already alarming. By 2020, however, ransomware attacks reached a staggering number, between 20,000 and 30,000 per day in the United States alone. That is a ransomware attack every eleven seconds, each of which cost victims …

The Limits Of Regulation By Insurance, Kenneth S. Abraham, Daniel Benjamin Schwarcz

Indiana Law Journal

Insurance is an enormously powerful and beneficial method of spreading risk and compensating for loss. But even insurance has its limits. A new and misleading aspiration for insurance—that it also can and often does substitute for or significantly complement health and safety regulation—is increasingly in vogue. This vision starts from the uncontroversial recognition that insurers typically adopt measures designed to counteract “moral hazard,” the tendency of insurance to blunt policyholders’ incentives to take care. But proponents of this vision go on to contend that the risk-reducing potential of insurance is significantly more extensive than is traditionally imagined, because insurers are …

Public Policy And The Insurability Of Cyber Risk, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In June 2017, the food and beverage conglomerate Mondelez International became a victim of the NotPetya ransomware attack. Around 1,700 of its servers and 24,000 of the company’s laptops were suddenly and permanently unusable. Commercial supply and distribution disruptions, theft of credentials from many users, and unfulfilled customer orders soon followed, leading to losses that totaled more than $100 million. Unfortunately, Zurich, which had sold the company a property insurance policy that included a variety of coverages, informed Mondelez in 2018 that cyber coverage would be denied under the policy based on the “war exclusion clause.” This case, now pending, …

Insuring Evolving Technology, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The study of the interaction between law and technology is more critical today than ever before. Advancements in artificial intelligence, information communications, biological and chemical engineering, and space-faring technologies, to name but a few examples, are forcing us to reexamine our traditional understanding of basic concepts in torts and insurance law.

Yet, few insurance professionals and scholars will identify themselves as working in the field of “law-and-technology.” For many of them, technology is “just a fact about the world like any other,” as Ryan Calo once put it, not one that always merits “special care.”

This short paper is an …

States Should Quickly Reform Unemployment Insurance, Brian Galle, David Gamage, Erin Scharff, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

COVID-19 is causing mass layoffs and related economic hardship, as well as budget crises for state and local governments. This article is part of Project SAFE (State Action in Fiscal Emergencies), an academic effort to help states weather the fiscal crisis by providing policy recommendations backed by research. This article will focus on how state governments should reform unemployment insurance (UI) eligibility and benefits and the taxes funding these programs.

The Current System Of Resolving Insurance Disputes In Saudi Arabia: Its Weaknesses And Ways Of Developing It, Saleh Alsheha

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Insurance industry generally revolves around financial risks, and the business of insurance companies is reliant on the resolution of claims that arise from these risks associated with insurance policies. In fact, insurance companies routinely adjust claims and provide indemnities to the insureds or beneficiaries. In some cases, however, the resolution of claims may falter, resulting in disputes that involve conflicting views between the insurer and insured on the eligibility of indemnity. Hence, this requires the existence of an effective and smooth mechanism that guarantees the end of such conflicts and protects the rights of the parties involved in insurance contracts. …

The Specific Consumer Expectations Test For Product Defects, Clayton J. Masterman, W. Kip Viscusi

Indiana Law Journal

In this Article, we propose that courts adopt an amended version of the consumer expectations test that we call the “specific consumer expectations test.” The specific consumer expectations test would apply to any product or product component for which consumers have clear, articulable ex ante expectations about the function of the product. Under the specific consumer expectations test, a defendant is liable if consumers expected such a product to reduce a particular risk, and the product in fact increased that risk. Similarly, if a product was intended to convey a particular benefit, but in fact harmed consumers along the same …

The Promises And Pitfalls Of Harmonization: What Insurance Guarantee Schemes Tell Us About When Harmonization Works, Jordan Burton

Indiana Law Journal

In Part I, this Note considers the mechanisms of harmonization and the regulatory and fairness policy concerns that harmonization is designed to address. Part II explores some of the problems harmonization can create, with an eye toward how those problems manifest in the IGS context. Finally, Part III discusses how IGS address an urgent and inevitable problem that affects actors in the insurance market at every level. By analyzing comments on the Commission’s White Paper, Part III proposes that these three factors—convergence of stakeholder interest, inevitability, and urgency— are key to understanding when member states, EU citizens, and industry actors …

The American Health Care Act Would Toss The States A Hot Potato, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This essay explains how the American Health Care Act (AHCA) – the House Republicans’ proposed replacement for Obamacare – would toss a hot potato to state governments. Were the AHCA to be enacted into law, state governments would need to act promptly if they are to save individual insurance markets within their states. This essay explains measures that state governments might take to respond to this threat.

Transformations In Statehood, The Investor- State Regime, And The New Constitutionalism, A. Claire Cutler

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This paper examines the changing boundaries of statehood resulting from transformations in the nature and operation of public and private authority over local and global politico-legal orders. Transformations in the political purposes of states are being driven by powerful elites who advance a new form of constitutional governance. New constitutionalism, as evidenced by the investor-state regime, subordinates the interests, purposes, and rights of national citizens to those of foreign, transnational politico-legal, and economic elites. This regime is a highly privatized order that is expanding in influence, both in terms of the commercial activities under its remit, and in terms of …

It Saves To Be Healthy: Using The Tax Code To Incentivize Employer-Provided Wellness Benefits, Hilary R. Shepherd

Indiana Law Journal

With lifestyle-related disease on the rise and an increasing number of employers being held responsible for providing health insurance to their employees, we as a society have incentives to promote wellness, even if only to cut health care costs. Part I of this Note outlines a brief history of employer-provided wellness benefits and provides a concise summary of the employer-provided wellness benefits available. Part II analyzes the relevant federal income tax law, specifically, the fringe benefits provision of the Internal Revenue Code, and concludes that under existing tax law, on-premises gym facilities do not yield any taxable income to employees, …

A Thousand Tiny Pieces: The Federal Circuit’S Fractured Myriad Ruling, Lessons To Be Learned, And The Way Forward, Jonathan R. K. Stroud

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

American Law: Integrating Ultra-Traditional Muslims Through Accommodations, Mohamed A. Elsanousi

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Appropriate legal accommodations for religious minorities can support their integration into American society. Historically, the teachings and practices of many religious communities that have otherwise conflicted with state or federal law have been successfully preserved through legal accommodations. A brief comparison with the experiences of such groups as the Hasidic Jewish community will provide a context for religiously based legal accommodations for various religious communities within the United States.

This dissertation examines the particular situation of a Tablighi Jamaat community, a Muslim missionary movement, as a means to explore how legal accommodations facilitate the successful, stable integration of such groups. …

Symbiotic Reform To Regulate The Insurance Industry: Regulators, Market Access, And Antitrust Issues In The U.S. And Korea, Sung Keun Chun

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation deals with different issues together: regulators, market access, and antitrust in the insurance industry in the U.S. and Korea. The insurance market is regulated by the state alone and more than 51 requirements exist to establish an insurance company in the U.S. The insurance industry is also statutorily exempted from federal antitrust laws in certain conditions under the McCarran-Ferguson Act, which is facing proposals to reveal or revise it from Congress. The appropriate licensing policy is important because it can contribute highly to social welfare and protect the market failure. The proper application of antitrust law with a …

The Unappreciated Inportance, For Small Business Defendants, Of The Duty To Settle, Robert H. Heidt

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Effective And Constitutional: Goals For A Hurricane Response Plan In The Aftermath Of Hurricanes Katrina And Rita, Neal Mchenry

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Insuring Corporate Crime, Miriam Hechler Baer

Indiana Law Journal

Corporate criminal liability has become an important and much-talked about topic. This Article argues that entity-based liability-particularly the manner in which it is currently applied by the federal government---creates social costs in excess of its benefits. To help companies better deter employee crime, the Article suggests the abolition of entity-wide criminal liability, and in its place, the adoption of an insurance system, whereby carriers would examine corporate compliance programs, estimate the risk that a corporation's employees would commit crimes, and then charge companies for insuring those risks. The insurance would cover civil penalties associated with the entity's employee-related criminal conduct. …

A Right Without A Potent Remedy: Indiana's Bad Faith Insurance Doctrine Leaves Injured Third Parties Without Full Redress, Gregory A. Bullman

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Insurance-Weight Of Evidence-Construction Of Policy-Proximate Cause

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Bridging The Gap Between Life Insurer And Consumer In The Genetic Testing Era: The Rf Proposal, Christopher M. Keefer

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Physician Employment Under Managed Care: Toward A Retaliatory Discharge Cause Of Action For Hmo-Affiliated Physicians, Peter B. Jurgeleit

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Insurance Discrimination Against Battered Women: Proposed Legislative Protections, Ellen J. Morrison

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

And Promises To Keep: The Future In Employment Discrimination, Julia C. Lamber

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Taxing Personal Insurance: The Case Of Tax Audit Insurance, William D. Popkin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

State Insurance Takeover Acts: A Constitutional Analysis After Edgar V. Mite, Christopher Keele

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Rule Of Insurable Interest And The Principle Of Indemnity: Are They Measures Of Damages In Property Insurance?, Emeric Fischer

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Insurer Intervention In Uninsured Motorist Cases, Alan W. Becker

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Indiana's Allowance Of Punitive Damages In Contract Actions Against Insurance Companies: How New Is It?, Susan Marguet

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Defining Taxable Consumption: A Comment On Personal Insurance Premiums, William D. Popkin

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Consumer Warranty Or Insurance Contract? A View Towards A Rational State Regulatory Policy, Doyal Mclemore Jr.

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.