Insurance Law Commons^™

The Bad News About Good Faith For Excess Um Carriers, Robert L. Tucker

Akron Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Mahler V. Szucs: An Impediment To Interinsurer Arbitration And Affordable Personal Injury Protection Coverage, John R. Nicholson

Seattle University Law Review

This Note will demonstrate that the Mahler court's decision will lead to inefficient results, because it has essentially compelled PIP insurers to accept representation by attorneys who have a conflict of interests, precluding such insurers from selecting the best means of recovering their PIP interests. As a result, the price of insurance premiums inevitably will escalate, while providing plaintiffs' attorneys with a windfall of increased fees for performing no additional work for their clients. The following discussion will show not only that the Mahler court holding is inefficient as a matter of public policy, but also that its analysis ignores …

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

Scholarly Works

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.

Deposed Parties: Who Has A Right To Access Depositions In Civil Cases?, Robert L. Tucker

Akron Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Recent Case Developments, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

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

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

Scholarly Works

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, …

The Tale Of A Tail, James F. Hogg

Faculty Scholarship

The commercial general liability insurance industry shifted, in 1986, from the use of an “occurrence-based” to a “claims-made” policy form. So-called “tail” or “long tail” claims have continued nevertheless, to be asserted under the older “occurrence” policies which required that injury occur during the term of the policy, but not that the claim for such injury be made or brought at any particular time. In seeking state approval to use the new “claims-made” form in 1985-86, the insurance industry represented that the new form would not affect coverage under the old “occurrence” form. Despite that representation, insurers are now asserting, …

Disability And Income Loss Benefits Under The Minnesota No-Fault Act, Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

The Minnesota No-Fault Automobile Insurance Act was intended to ensure the “prompt payment of specific basic economic loss benefits to victims of automobile accidents without regard to whose fault caused the accident,” to prevent overcompensation of less seriously injured people by the interposition of tort thresholds, and to encourage appropriate medical and rehabilitation treatment by assuring prompt payment for that treatment. It seems clear that at least some of the initial promise of the Act has not been fulfilled. Payment of basic economic loss benefits, which the legislature intended to be paid promptly, has become bogged down in a quagmire …

Getting A Handle On Coverage Decisions: If Not Case Law, Then What - Comments On A Paper By Professor William Sage, Maxwell J. Mehlman

Faculty Publications

Comments on Professor William Sage's paper "Judicial Opinons Involving Health Insurance Coverage: Trope L'Oeil or Window on the World."

Reason And Pollution: Construing The "Absolute" Pollution Exclusion In Context And In Light Of Its Purpose And Party Expectations, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Responding to the flurry of environmental coverage litigation over the application of the “sudden and accidental” pollution exclusion, the insurance industry during the mid-1980s largely adopted new standard pollution exclusion language for commercial general liability (CGL) policies. Since the mid-1980s, the standard form CGL has included the so-called absolute pollution exclusion, which provides that the insurance does not apply to bodily injury or property damage “arising out of the actual, alleged or threatened discharge, dispersal, seepage, migration, release, or escape of pollutants.” A “pollutant” is defined as “any solid, liquid, gaseous or thermal irritant or contaminant, including smoke, vapor, soot, …

Industrial Espionage As Unfair Competition, Robert L. Tucker

Akron Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Recent Case Developments, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Recent case developments in Insurance Law in years 1998 and 1999.

Recent Case Developments, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Recent case developments in Insurance law in the year 1998.

"And The Truth Shall Make You Free": Truth As A First Amendment Defense In Tortious Interference With Contract Cases, Robert L. Tucker

Akron Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Toward A Tax-Based Explanation Of The Liability Insurance Crisis, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

The so-called liability insurance crisis of 1985 and 1986 transformed the way we think about tort law and about liability insurance markets. The crisis phenomena, which first appeared in late 1984 and lasted until mid-1986, consisted of enormous increases in liability insurance premiums and alarming reductions in the availability of certain types of liability coverage. In the two principal liability lines of insurance (Other Liability and Medical Malpractice), premiums increased by hundreds (in some cases thousands) of percentage points in a matter of months. At the same time, the availability of liability insurance contracted sharply. The liability policies that were …

Consumer Choice In The North Carolina Auto Insurance Market, Jeffrey O'Connell, Stephen Carroll, Michael Horowitz, Allan Abrahamse, Bradley Miliauskas

Campbell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fine Tuning Your Auto Accident Case, Oregon Law Institute, Norma S. Poitras, Lee Aronson, K. William Gibson, Stephen R. Moore, Peter Fisher, Thomas R. Fries

Oregon Law Institute, 1995

Course Materials from the November 3, 1995 Program in Portland

The Flexible Doctrine Of Spoliation Of Evidence; Cause Of Action, Defense, Evidentiary Presumption And Discovery Sanction, Robert L. Tucker

Akron Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Techniques And Tactics In Personal Injury Trials, Oregon Law Institute, Jodie Anne Bushman, Jeffrey S. Mutnick, Frank A. Moscato, Stephen F, English, Bruce R. Powell, Robert D. Dames Jr., Diana I. Stuart, Gerald C. Doblie, Craig C. Murphy, Judy D. Snyder

Oregon Law Institute, 1995

Course Materials from the April 14, 1995 Program in Portland

Employer Liability Under The Third Party Provision Of The Washington Industrial Insurance Act: The Dual Capacity And Dual Persona Doctrines In Evans V. Thompson, Melissa M. Jackson

Seattle University Law Review

Most workers' compensation schemes are designed to provide a swift and sure source of benefits to injured workers by placing on employers the risks and burdens of modern industry. In keeping with this policy, Washington's Industrial Insurance Act2 (IIA) requires injured workers to relinquish the right to sue at common law for damages sustained on the job, and it requires employers to accept liability for a measure of damages set out by the statute. However, if a worker's injuries are caused by the negligence of a third person who is not in the worker's same employ, the IIA's third-party provision …

Vexatious Litigation As Unfair Competition And The Applicability Of The Noerr-Pennington Doctrine, Robert L. Tucker

Akron Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of: Making Decisions About Liability And Insurance (Colin Camerer & Howard Kunreuther Eds.), Joseph M. Carreiro Jr.

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Review of: Making Decisions about Liability and Insurance (Colin Camerer & Howard Kunreuther eds., Kluwer Academic Publishers 1993). Figures, index, notes, tables. ISBN 0-7923-9393-7 [139 pp. Cloth $89.95. 101 Phillip Drive, Assinippi Park, Norwell MA 02061.1

Solving The Judgment-Proof Problem, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

A tortfeasor who cannot fully pay for the harms that it causes is said to be "judgment proof." Commentators have long recognized that the existence of judgment-proof tortfeasors seriously undermines the deterrence and insurance goals of tort law. The deterrence goal is undermined because, irrespective of the liability rule, judgment-proof tortfeasors will not fully internalize the costs of the accidents they cause. The insurance goal will be undermined to the extent that the judgment-proof tortfeasor will not be able to compensate fully its victims and that first-party insurance markets do not provide an adequate response. Liability insurance can ameliorate these …

Revising Section 402a: The Limits Of Tort As Social Insurance, James A. Henderson Jr.

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Private Insurance, Social Insurance, And Tort Reform: Toward A New Vision Of Compensation For Illness And Injury, Kenneth S. Abraham, Lance Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

The United States does not have a system for compensating the victims of illness and injury; it has a set of different institutions that provide compensation. We rely on both tort law and giant programs of public and private insurance to compensate the victims of illness and injury. These institutions perform related functions, but the relationships among them are far from coherent. Indeed, the institutions sometimes work at cross-purposes, compensating some victims excessively and others not at all.

The absence of a coherent system of compensation is reflected even in suggested reforms of existing institutions. Proposals to reform tort law …

Revising Section 402a: The Limits Of Tort As Social Insurance, James A. Henderson Jr.

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Tort Of Bad Faith In First-Party Insurance Transactions: Refining The Standard Of Culpability And Reformulating The Remedies By Statute, Roger C. Henderson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article explores the common-law and statutory background of the tort of bad faith in first-party insurance situations analyzes the varying standards of culpability that have been developed by the courts and suggests a uniform statutory solution to the problems created by the varying standards. The statute also tailors the remedies more closely to the particular type of insurer wrongdoing. The proposed remedies recognize the dual nature of the insurer-insured relationship, that is, one based upon contract and tort concepts. Such a statute would eliminate many of the ambiguities and other deficiencies in the common law of those states that …

Pharmaceutical Product Liability May Be Hazardous To Your Health: A No-Fault Alternative To Concurrent Regulation, Gregory C. Jackson

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Duty To Defend - Brown V. Lumbermens Mutual Casualty Company, George H. Pender

Campbell Law Review

This Note has five purposes. First, this Note reviews the facts of Brown v. Lumbermens Mut. Casualty Co. Second, this Note examines the judicial logic of the Brown decision. Third, this Note addresses public policy concerns left unanswered by the courts. Fourth, this Note examines Brown's impact on N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-279.21(b)(4). Finally, this Note concludes that while Brown should be applauded for extending the duty to defend, the court unnecessarily stretched basic principles of contract law to justify its decision.

The First-Party Insurance Externality: An Economic Justification For Enterprise Liability, Jon D. Hanson, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

This Article explores the insurance and deterrence implications of important and long overlooked facts. Consumers are insured through first-party mechanisms against most of the risks of product accidents. However, first-party insurers rarely and imperfectly adjust premiums according to an individual consumer's decisions concerning exactly what products she will purchase, how many of those products she will purchase, and how carefully she will consume them. Such consumer decisions we refer to as "consumption choices. " This failure by first-party insurers to adjust premiums according to consumption choices gives rise to a first-party insurance externality. Based on this insight, this Article offers …