Insurance Law Commons^™

In Her Words: Recognizing And Preventing Abusive Litigation Against Domestic Violence Survivors, David Ward

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Pension De-Risking, Brendan Maher

Faculty Articles and Papers

The United States is facing a retirement crisis, in significant part because defined benefit pension plans have been replaced by defined contribution retirement plans that, whatever their theoretical merit, have left significant numbers of workers unprepared for retirement. A troubling example of the continuing movement away from defined benefit plans is a new phenomenon euphemistically called “pension de-risking.” Recent years have been marked by high-profile companies engaging in various actions designed to reduce the company’s exposure to pension funding risk (hence the term “pension de-risking”). Some de-risking strategies convert a federally-guaranteed pension into a more risky private annuity. Other approaches …

Private Dollars For Public Litigation: An Introduction, Anthony J. Sebok

Articles

The article argues that litigation investment—where third-party funders provide capital for lawsuits in exchange for a share of potential recoveries—should be extended to public litigation. It contends that the economic rationale for litigation investment applies equally to public entities, such as state Attorneys General, as it does to private litigants. The author highlights the funding gap in public litigation, particularly in large-scale cases against well-resourced defendants, and suggests that litigation investment could address this gap more effectively than contingent fee arrangements with private attorneys.

Should The Law Preserve Party Control? Litigation Investment, Insurance Law, And Double Standards, Anthony J. Sebok

Articles

Litigation investment, sometimes known as litigation finance, is increasingly accepted around the world. Once prohibited as champerty, litigation investment is now embraced in England, Canada, and Australia, as well as in many civil law nations. In the United States, the development of a robust market for investment in litigation has been met by various objections. One objection is that litigation investment interferes with the autonomy of lawyers. A second objection is that it promotes frivolous litigation.

This Article takes up a popular argument against litigation investment: the legal system should not encourage parties to sell their control over litigation that …

The Macroprudential Turn: From Institutional 'Safety And Soundness' To Systematic 'Financial Stability' In Financial Supervision, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Since the global financial dramas of 2008-09, authorities on financial regulation have come increasingly to counsel the inclusion of macroprudential policy instruments in the standard ‘toolkit’ of finance-regulatory measures employed by financial supervisors. The hallmark of this perspective is its focus not simply on the safety and soundness of individual financial institutions, as is characteristic of the traditional ‘microprudential’ perspective, but also on certain structural features of financial systems that can imperil such systems as wholes. Systemic ‘financial stability’ thus comes to supplement, though not to supplant, institutional ‘safety and soundness’ as a regulatory desideratum.

The move from primarily micro- …

The Risks Of Shadow Insurance, Daniel Schwarcz

Georgia Law Review

Shadow banking - often defined as financial intermediation that provides maturity transformation outside of the formal confines of a bank'-played a central role in causing the 2008 financial crisis. For this reason, a 2013 report of the New York Department of Financial Services generated substantial controversy when it labeled some life insurers' practices of reinsuring insurance policies with affiliated captive insurers as "shadow insurance." Yet the moniker of shadow insurance was not without at least some justification. Like shadow banking, life insurers' reinsurance of policies with affiliated captives is a form of regulatory arbitrage that moves traditional insurance risks from …

Remembering The Bay Of Pigs: Using Letters Of Credit To Facilitate The Resolution Of International Disputes, Gerald T. Mclaughlin

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Control, Anthony J. Sebok

Articles

Despite the recent rejection by the ABA of attempts to weaken the limitations on the sharing of fees with non-lawyers, pressure to allow laypersons to invest in lawsuits remains. This article looks at one argument against lay investment in litigation, which is that laypersons should not be able to control how litigation is conducted.

Litigation Investment And Legal Ethics: What Are The Real Issues?, Anthony J. Sebok

Articles

One of the foundational principles of legal ethics is that the lawyer owes an obligation of undivided loyalty to the client, and no other interests or relationships can be permitted to interfere with the lawyer's exercise of independent professional judgment on behalf of the client. The strongest objections to litigation investment by third parties is that it may compromise a lawyer's independence. This article examines this objection in the context of a recent report from the Ethics Committee of the Commercial and Federal Litigation Section of the New York State Bar Association and argues that it misses the real legal …

Regulating Systemic Risk In Insurance, Daniel Schwarcz, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

As exemplified by the dramatic failure of AIG, insurance companies and their affiliates played a central role in the 2008 global financial crisis. It is therefore not surprising that the Dodd-Frank Act—the United States’ primary legislative re-sponse to the crisis—contained an entire title dedicated to insurance regulation, which has traditionally been the responsibility of individual states. The most important insurance-focused reforms in Dodd-Frank empower the Federal Reserve Bank to impose an additional layer of regulatory scrutiny on top of state insurance regulation for a small number of “systemically important” nonbank financial companies, such as AIG. This Article argues, however, that …

The Undersigned Attorney Hereby Certifies -- The Washington Supreme Court Rule On Standards And Its Implications, Justice Sheryl Gordon Mccloud, Justice Susan Owens, Marc Boman, Joanne Moore

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

G Forces: Gideon V. Wainwright And Matthew Adler's Move Beyond Cost-Benefit Analysis, Janet Moore

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Dark Medicine: How The National Research Act Has Failed To Address Racist Practices In Biomedical Experiments Targeting The African-American Community, Anietie Maureen-Ann Akpan

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Do We Have It Right This Time? An Analysis Of The Accomplishments And Shortcomings Of Washington's Indian Child Welfare Act, Karen Gray Young

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Securing Food Justice, Sovereignty & Sustainability In The Face Of The Food Safety Modernization Act (Fsma), Eve Kerber

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Driving While License Suspended - Third Degree, A Framework For Requesting Alternative Sentences, Sahar Fathi

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

About The Authors

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Jacqueline Mcmurtrie

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Gideon At Fifty -- Golden Anniversary Or Mid Life Crisis, Kim Taylor-Thompson

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Fifty Years After Gideon: It Is Long Past Time To Provide Lawyers For Misdemeanor Defendants Who Cannot Afford To Hire Their Own, Robert C. Boruchowitz

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Gideon: Looking Backward, Looking Forward, Looking In The Mirror, Steven Zeidman

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Legal Financial Obligations: Fulfilling The Promise Of Gideon By Reducing The Burden, Travis Stearns

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Does The Right To Counsel On Appeal End As You Exit The Court Of Appeals?, Nancy P. Collins

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Improving Access To Justice: Plain Language Family Law Court Forms In Washington State, Charles R. Dyer, Joan E. Fairbanks, M. Lynn Greiner, Kirsten Barron, Janet L. Skreen, Josefina Cerrillo-Ramirez, Andrew Lee, Bill Hinsee

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Congress' Encroachment On The President's Power In Indian Law And Its Effect On Executive-Order Reservations, Mark R. Carter Jd, Phd

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Antitrust And California's New Preferred Provider Organization Legislation: A New Alternative In Health Care Cost Containment , Carol A. Woo

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Improving Retirement Savings Options For Employees, James Kwak

Faculty Articles and Papers

Americans do not save enough for retirement. One reason is that our retirement savings accounts — whether employer-sponsored defined-contribution plans such as 401(k) plans or individual retirement accounts — are heavily invested in actively managed mutual funds that siphon off tens of billions of dollars in fees every year yet deliver returns that trail the overall market. Under existing law, as interpreted by the courts, mutual funds may charge high fees to investors, and companies may offer expensive, active funds to their employees. This paper argues that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act should be reinterpreted, in light of basic …

California Dreaming: The California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Trust Act, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

Half of American workers are not covered by employer-sponsored retirement arrangements. The recently passed California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Trust Act seeks to solve this problem by mandating retirement savings arrangements for California employers, coupled with a public investment vehicle for investing these private retirement savings. The Act is important because of California’s size and status as a trendsetter for other states.

This Article is the first to examine the important legal questions the Act raises under the Internal Revenue Code and ERISA. Contrary to the drafters’ intent, the savings accounts authorized under the Act do not qualify as individual …

Standing To Sue A Carrier's Killers , Davis J. Howard

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.