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Full-Text Articles in Insurance Law

A Mixed Bag For Chicken Little: Analyzing Year 2000 Claims And Insurance Coverage, Jeffrey W. Stempel Jan 1999

A Mixed Bag For Chicken Little: Analyzing Year 2000 Claims And Insurance Coverage, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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A visitor from another planet reading the popular and insurance trade press would probably conclude that the world stands on the abyss of a business, tort, and insurance crisis of unprecedented proportion. Media coverage of an impending Year 2000 “crisis” has reached a fevered pitch, with predictions of both a gigantic volume of Year 2000 claims and a correspondingly large amount of insurance coverage litigation. Many predict that the Year 2000 problem (also known as the “Y2K” or “Millennium Bug” problem) will create coverage controversies and costs dwarfing major insurance battles of the late twentieth century such as those concerning …


Judge-Made Insurance That Was Not On The Menu: Schmidt V. Smith And The Confluence Of Text, Expectation, And Public Policy In The Realm Of Employment Practices Liability, Jeffrey W. Stempel Jan 1999

Judge-Made Insurance That Was Not On The Menu: Schmidt V. Smith And The Confluence Of Text, Expectation, And Public Policy In The Realm Of Employment Practices Liability, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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In Schmidt v. Smith, the New Jersey Supreme Court caught more than a few observers by surprise. New Jersey courts have generally issued opinions regarded as pro-claimant and pro-policyholders. But everyone's taste for recompense and coverage has limits. In Schmidt, the court exceeded those limits for many observers by holding that despite what it regarded as clear contract language in an exclusion, an insurer providing Employers’ Liability (“EL”) coverage along with Workers' Compensation (“WC”) insurance for the employer was required to provide coverage in a case of blatant sexual harassment bordering on criminal assault. In doing so, the Schmidt court, …


Recent Case Developments, Jeffrey W. Stempel Jan 1999

Recent Case Developments, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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Recent case developments in Insurance law in the year 1998-1999.


Insurance Coverage Of Employment Discrimination Claims, Francis J. Mootz Iii Jan 1999

Insurance Coverage Of Employment Discrimination Claims, Francis J. Mootz Iii

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This article discusses insurance coverage of employment discrimination claims under both existing policies and emerging Employment Practices Liability Insurance policies: The first part describes the “three *7 dimensional model” of liability insurance; the second part describes general principles of interpretation as applied by courts to insurance policies; and the third part describes public policy limitations on the interpretation of insurance policies. These first three sections establish the background necessary for analyzing the availability of insurance coverage for employment disputes. The fourth part of the article then analyzes the potential for coverage under standard types of liability insurance, while the fifth …


Insuring Employer Liability For Hostile Work Environment Claims: How Changes In Discrimination Law May Affect The Growing Market For Employment-Related Practices Liability Insurance, Francis J. Mootz Iii Jan 1999

Insuring Employer Liability For Hostile Work Environment Claims: How Changes In Discrimination Law May Affect The Growing Market For Employment-Related Practices Liability Insurance, Francis J. Mootz Iii

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Assessing the role that Employment Practices Liability Insurance might play in the future requires an understanding of two murky areas of law: employment law and insurance coverage law. In Part I of the Article I discuss the evolution of employer liability for hostile work environment sexual harassment. In Part II of the Article I analyze the consequences for insurance coverage that follow from recognizing that liability for hostile work environment sexual harassment is grounded on negligence principles.


Foreward: Employment Practies Liability Insurance And The Changing American Workplace, Francis J. Mootz Iii Jan 1999

Foreward: Employment Practies Liability Insurance And The Changing American Workplace, Francis J. Mootz Iii

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In the past fifteen years there has been substantial insurance coverage litigation as employers have attempted to secure coverage under their liability insurance program for employment-related practices liabilities. In recognition of this significant development of a body of law, and growing out of an American Bar Association Annual Meeting panel discussion in which I participated, the Western New England Law Review published a Symposium in 1996 entitled, Insurance Coverage of Employment Disputes. Employers continue to seek insurance coverage for these liabilities under their traditional liability insurance policies, but the situation has dramatically changed in the past several years. On the …


Domtar Baby: Misplaced Notions Of Equitable Apportionment Create A Thicket Of Potential Unfairness For Insurance Policyholders, Jeffrey W. Stempel Jan 1999

Domtar Baby: Misplaced Notions Of Equitable Apportionment Create A Thicket Of Potential Unfairness For Insurance Policyholders, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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Minnesota has an enduring reputation as a progressive, even liberal state hospitable to the underdog and concerned for fairness. This is hardly a surprise for the home state of prominent liberal politicians such as Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Eugene McCarthy and Paul Wellstone. The perception of Minnesota liberalism, populism, or pro-plaintiff sympathies extends to the technical legal realm as well. Lawyers know about prominent Minnesota cases favoring claimants. Many are reprinted in casebooks or otherwise disproportionately well-known. Most recently, Minnesota was again in the news as the state unwilling to join in a proposed national settlement of claims against the …


Embracing Descent: The Bankruptcy Of A Business Paradigm For Conceptualizing And Regulating The Legal Profession, Jeffrey W. Stempel Jan 1999

Embracing Descent: The Bankruptcy Of A Business Paradigm For Conceptualizing And Regulating The Legal Profession, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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Lawyers are said to travel in packs, or at least pairs, and in the popular parlance are often compared to hoards of locusts, herds of cattle, or unruly mobs. However, at least for purposes of assessing concerns with professionalism currently surrounding the bar and the public, whether attorneys are more or less social than other human animals does not matter. My point is simply that lawyers are social beings; like other human beings in social and occupational groups, lawyers behave largely in accordance with group norms, in much the same way peer pressure led Julian English toward juvenile delinquency in …