Law Commons^™

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

Mercer Law Review

The Georgia Supreme Court reviewed, and reversed, two cases featured prominently in last year's Insurance survey article, and it also held a key provision of tort reform preempted by federal law.

The Georgia Supreme Court reversed the decision in Ryder Integrated Logistics, Inc. v. BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc. and held that an agreement to name another as an additional insured could not be used to salvage an invalid indemnification clause in the parties' contract. The legislature amended Official Code of Georgia Annotated ("O.C.G.A.") section 13-8-2 to help avoid this type of litigation in the future.

However, both appellate courts continued …

Slayers And Soldiers: The Validity And Scope Of The Slayer's Rule Under The Family Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance Act, Rebecca Blasco

Washington Law Review

The "slayer's rule"—a common law doctrine—precludes a murderer from financially benefiting from the victim's death by denying him or her the right to proceeds from the victim's life insurance policy. Some jurisdictions have extended this rule to disqualify the slayer's exclusive family members from receiving the victim's insurance proceeds as beneficiaries. Exclusive family members are those either not related to the victim or related to the victim only by marriage. The slayer's rule applies to federal group life insurance policies, such as the Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance Act (SGLI), which provides life insurance to servicemembers. Spouses and dependent children of …

Offsetting Risks, Ariel Porat

Michigan Law Review

Under prevailing tort law, an injurer who must choose between Course of Action A, which creates a risk of 500 (there is a probability of .1 that a harm of 5000 will result), and Course of Action B, which creates a risk of 400 (there is a probability of.] that a harm of 4000 will result), and who negligently opts for the former will be held liable for the entire harm of 5000 that materializes. This full liability forces the injurer to pay damages that are five times higher than would be necessary to internalize the risk of 100 that …

Ninety Years Of Health Insurance Reform Efforts In California, California Research Bureau

California Agencies

This report will provide an overview of legislative and gubernatorial efforts to increase the number of Californians with health insurance. It will review the state's health care policy for the medically indigent for the period from 1918 until the present, and will describe legislative proposals to increase the number of insured. The review will also indicate whether the proposals were financed by regressive or progressive revenue taxes, fees, or insurance premiums. Over that period, legislators introduced at least 44 measures to reduce the number of medically uninsured people in California. There also were four ballot measures that would have increased …

Mississippi River Stories: Lessons From A Century Of Unnatural Disasters, Sandra B. Zellmer, Christine A. Klein

Faculty Law Review Articles

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the nation pondered how a relatively weak Category 3 storm could have destroyed an entire region. Few appreciated the extent to which a flawed federal water development policy transformed this apparently natural disaster into a "manmade" disaster; fewer still appreciated how the disaster was the predictable, and indeed predicted, sequel to almost a century of similar disasters. This Article focuses upon three such stories: the Great Flood of 1927, the Midwest Flood of 1993, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita of 2005. Taken together, the stories reveal important lessons, including the inadequacy of engineered flood …

H.R. 3355, The Homeowners Defense Act Of 2007: Hearing Before The Subcomm. On Housing And Community Opportunity And The Subcomm. On Capital Markets Of The H. Comm. On Financial Services, 110th Cong., Sept. 6, 2007 (Statement Of John D. Echeverria, Geo. U. L. Center), John D. Echeverria

Testimony Before Congress

No abstract provided.

The Application Of Insurable Interest In Marine Transportation, Lijun Shi

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Diabetes Treatments And Moral Hazard, Jonathan Klick, Thomas Stratmann

All Faculty Scholarship

In the face of rising rates of diabetes, many states have passed laws requiring health insurance plans to cover medical treatments for the disease. Although supporters of the mandates expect them to improve the health of diabetics, the mandates have the potential to generate a moral hazard to the extent that medical treatments might displace individual behavioral improvements. Another possibility is that the mandates do little to improve insurance coverage for most individuals, as previous research on benefit mandates has suggested that mandates often duplicate what plans already cover. To examine the effects of these mandates, we employ a triple-differences …

La Cesión De Derechos En El Código Civil Peruano, Edward Ivan Cueva

Edward Ivan Cueva

La Cesión de Derechos en el Código Civil Peruano

Life, Health, And Disability Insurance: Understanding The Relationships, Robert H. Jerry Ii

Faculty Publications

This project focuses on the extent to which dis-ability insurers should be allowed to use genetic information in underwriting and rate-setting, but this subject cannot be completely isolated from the related questions of whether life and health insurers should also have this discretion. Federal and state laws place significant restrictions on insurers' use of genetic information in health insurance, but regulation of such use in life and disability insurance is considerably more modest. This essay examines the reasons for this disparity and discusses the implications for future proposals to regulate disability insurers' use of genetic information in underwriting and rate-set-ting. …

The Status Of The Notice/Prejudice Rule For Liability Insurance Claims In Nevada, Timothy S. Menter, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Segundo Congreso Nacional De Organismos Públicos Autónomos, Bruno L. Costantini García

Bruno L. Costantini García

Memorias del Segundo Congreso Nacional de Organismos Públicos Autónomos. "Autonomía, Profesionalización, Control y Transparencia"

Algunos Apuntes En Torno A La Prescripción Extintiva Y La Caducidad, Edward Ivan Cueva

Edward Ivan Cueva

No abstract provided.

Federal Tax Incentives For Health Insurance, California Research Bureau

California Agencies

The treatment of health insurance and health care expenses in the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) is the primary means by which the federal government encourages health insurance coverage. For most working Americans and their families, tax treatment of health expenses depends largely on whether their health plan is paid for by an employer, whether they are self-employed, and whether they itemize deductions and have medical expenses that exceed 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income (AGI)1 This brief describes federal tax incentives for health insurance, and their combined implications for costs and coverage.

The Insurance Function Of Contracts Revisited, Bruno Meyerhof Salama

Bruno Meyerhof Salama

One of the central problems in contract law is to define the frontier between legal and illegal breaches of promises. The distinction between good and bad faith is perhaps the conceptual tool most commonly used to tell one from the other. Lawyers spend a lot of energy trying to frame better definitions of the concepts of good and bad faith based on principles of ethics or justice, but often pay much less attention to theories dealing with the incentives that can engender good faith behavior in contractual relationships. By describing the economics of what Stiglitz defined as “explicit” and “implicit” …

To-May-To, To-Mah-To; Act Of War, Act Of Terrorism: How Semantics In Insurance Contracts Affect The Public Insurance Adjuster, Megan Reuwer

Student Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Civil Authority Order Provisions In Business Interruption Insurance Policies: Why The Unique Circumstances Surrounding The Hurricane Katrina Evacuation Will Result In More Policyholder Recoveries Than Those Received By 9/11 Policyholders, Jennifer Cook

Student Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Taxing Risk: An Approach To Variable Insurance Reform, Charlene Luke

UF Law Faculty Publications

Variable life insurance and annuity contracts are susceptible to being marketed and sold to taxpayers for whom such contracts are unsuitable and to being used in wraparound insurance shelters. As a method of addressing these problems, I propose current taxation for the risky returns on these contracts but continued deferral for a deemed, risk-free return amount. The increased transparency resulting from the forced separate tax accounting of contract components should improve consumers' ability to receive adequate suitability evaluations and may also lead to lower fees. Current taxation of risk-related returns removes an apparently key shelter incentive and should make it …

Continuing Development Of Insurance Bad Faith In Montana, Greg Munro

Faculty Journal Articles & Other Writings

This article adds to a previous article from the summer 2000 issue of Trial Trends, which recounted the history of insurance bad faith in Montana reviewing its common law and statutory development and attempted to set forth the status of insurance bad faith at the millennium. This article addresses court decisions and the continuing development of the tort of insurance bad faith in the intervening years since then and is designed to provide a broad understanding of the borders of insurance bad faith in Montana to date.

The Empire Strikes Back: The Insurance Industry Battles Toxic Mold, Bryan Lake

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Secrets, Lies & Erisa: The Social Ethics Of Misrepresentations And Omissions In Summary Plan Descriptions, 40 J. Marshall L. Rev. 731 (2007), Alison Mcmorran Sulentic

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Process Is Due In The Adjudication Of Erisa Claims?, 40 J. Marshall L. Rev. 811 (2007), Mark D. Debofsky

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Pension Protection Act Of 2006: An Overview Of Sweeping Changes In The Law Governing Retirement Plans, 40 J. Marshall L. Rev. 843 (2007), Craig C. Martin, Joshua Rafsky

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Domestic Right Of Return?: Race, Rights, And Residency In New Orleans In The Aftermath Of Hurricane Katrina, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

This article begins with a critical account of what occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This critique serves as the backdrop for a discussion of whether there are international laws or norms that give poor, black Katrina victims the right to return to and resettle in New Orleans. In framing this discussion, this article first briefly explores some of the housing deprivations suffered by Katrina survivors that have led to widespread displacement and dispossession. The article then discusses two of the chief barriers to the return of poor blacks to New Orleans: the broad perception of a race-crime nexus …

Mississippi River Stories: Lessons From A Century Of Unnatural Disasters, Christine A. Klein, Sandra B. Zellmer

UF Law Faculty Publications

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the nation pondered how a relatively weak Category 3 storm could have destroyed an entire region. Few appreciated the extent to which a flawed federal water development policy transformed this apparently natural disaster into a "manmade" disaster; fewer still appreciated how the disaster was the predictable, and indeed predicted, sequel to almost a century of similar disasters. This Article focuses upon three such stories: the Great Flood of 1927, the Midwest Flood of 1993, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita of 2005. Taken together, the stories reveal important lessons, including the inadequacy of engineered flood …

Physicians' Insurance Limits And Malpractice Payments: Evidence From Texas Closed Claims, 1990-2003, Kathryn Zeiler, Charles Silver, Bernard Black, David Hyman, William Sage

Faculty Scholarship

Physicians' insuring practices influence their incentives to take care when treating patients, their risk of making out-of-pocket payments in malpractice cases, and the adequacy of compensation available to injured patients. Yet, these practices and their effects have rarely been studied. Using Texas Department of Insurance data on 9,525 paid malpractice claims against physicians that closed 1990-2003, we provide the first systematic evidence on levels of coverage purchased by physicians with paid liability claims and how those levels affect out-of-pocket payments and patient compensation. We find that these physicians carried much less insurance than is conventionally believed, that their real primary …

Causation Requirements In Tort And Insurance Law Practice: Demystifying Some Legal Causation Riddles, Peter N. Swisher

Law Faculty Publications

Legal causation requirements, in both tort and insurance law, rank among the most pervasive yet most elusive and most misunderstood of all legal concepts in Anglo-American law for legal practitioners, the courts,' and academic scholars alike. Indeed, no less an authority than William Lloyd Prosser has stated that there "is perhaps nothing in the entire field of law which has called forth more disagreement, or upon which the opinions are in such a welter of confusion" than proximate cause issues, "despite the manifold attempts which have been made to clarify the subject."

Although some commentators have looked upon legal causation's …

The Relationship Between Defense Counsel, Policyholders, And Insurers: Nevada Rides Yellow Cab Toward "Two-Client" Model Of Tripartite Relationship. Are Cumis Counsel And Malpractice Claims By Insurers Next?, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

It happens constantly in civil litigation. An insurance company hires a lawyer to defend its policyholder from a third party’s claim of injury. But just who is the lawyer’s “client?” Is it the policyholder who is the named defendant in the case and is “represented” in court proceedings? Or is it the insurer who, in most cases, selected the attorney, pays the attorney, supervises the litigation, and has (by the terms of the liability insurance policy) the right to settle the case, even over the objections of the policyholder? Ordinarily, the liability insurer has both the duty to defend a …

An Essay On The Need For Subsidized, Mandatory Long-Term Care Insurance, Lawrence A. Frolik

Articles

Imagine yourself in a room with 100 persons, all age sixty. Of the group, fifty-three are women and forty-seven are men. Racially and ethnically they mirror the population of Americans age sixty. Now answer the question: "Before the 100 die, how many will require long-term care and, on the average, for how many days and at what cost?" Give up? So do I. While it is common knowledge that many of us will need long-term care, no one seems to know how many will need such care or for how long. And some of you will ask, 'What do you …

Is A Guardian The Alter Ego Of The Ward?, Lawrence A. Frolik

Articles

A guardian has a fiduciary relationship to the ward, but what exactly does that mean? Certainly a guardian is expected to act in the best interests of the ward, but how are those interests determined? Guardians are encouraged to act just as the ward would, but that implies that a guardian is closer to being an agent of the ward than a fiduciary. Yet a guardian must reconcile that agent like duty with obligations to the court who appointed him. In light of the perceived value of implementing the wishes of the ward, increasingly, appointing courts have come to treat …