Insurance Law Commons^™

Review Of: Erin Dominique Williams & Leo Van Der Reis, Health Care At The Abyss: Managed Care Vs. The Goals Of Medicine (1997), Michael Boggs

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

Review of the book: Erin Dominique Williams & Leo van der Reis, Health Care at the Abyss: Managed Care vs. The Goals of Medicine (William S. Hein 1997). About the authors, acknowledgments, figures, index, preface, references, table of abbreviations. ISBN 1-57588-201-9 [242 pp. Paper.]

Protecting The Insured In Utah: Rethinking The "Interstitial" Approach Of Allen V. Prudential Property & Casualty Insurance Co., Mark T. Flickinger

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Born Classified, Born Free: An Essay For Henry Schwarzschild, Aviam Soifer

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Why An Insurance Regulation To Prohibit Redlining, 31 J. Marshall L. Rev. 489 (1998), Gregory D. Squires

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

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."

Insurance, Contract, And The Doctrine Of Reasonable Expectations, Robert H. Jerry Ii

Faculty Publications

This article examines the connections between the doctrine of reasonable expectations and the law of contract. Judge Keeton urged in his 1970 article that protecting the insured's reasonable expectations is a better justification for results in many reported cases than the rationales offered by judges! Without disagreeing with that point, it can be claimed, as this article does, that insurance law's efforts to explain outcomes that contradict the plain language of contractual text are appropriately viewed as a subset of a larger effort to rationalize contract law with the challenges presented by the widespread use of standardized forms in consumer …

Holt V. Grange Mut. Cas. Co. Children Not "Insureds" Under Policy Are Entitled To Death, Barbara Tyler, Thomas S. Tyler

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The recent Ohio Supreme Court decision of Holt v. Grange Mutual Casualty Co., is a consumer friendly decision and represents both an equitable and sound interpretation and application of Ohio law to consumer insurance contracts.The decision in Holt favors insurance consumers but has alarmed the insurance industry. The industry perceives the decision as bringing into question what language of an insurance policy will be upheld under the freedom of contract and what will be stricken as against public policy. First, the industry would argue that Holt seems to denigrate and abrogate the rights of an uninsurance/underinsurance provider to craft its …

Judicial Opinions Involving Health Insurance Coverage: Trompe L'Oeil Or Window On The World?, William M. Sage

Faculty Scholarship

This essay offers a few thoughts about using judicial decisions as the dataset for research into health insurance coverage. Part I offers a general overview of insurance coverage law. Part II considers why students of health insurance coverage gravitate toward studying published opinions. Part III then discusses what is wrong with the approach, and suggests alternatives. Finally, Part IV turns to what may be right with the approach, concluding that judicial opinions in coverage litigation may reveal the functionality (or dysfunctionality) of the coverage process in managed care. Although the basic critique which the essay presents applies to areas other …

Symposium, The Florida Tobacco Litigation -- Fact, Law, Policy, And Significance, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

This is the transcript of the Florida tobacco litigation symposium, discussing the s$11.3 billion settlement concerning tobacco in the state of Florida. Jeffrey W. Stempel served as co-chair and moderator of the symposium.

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, …

Montana Law And The Out-Of-State Policy, Greg Munro

Faculty Journal Articles & Other Writings

This article discusses issues that may be encountered when attempting to ensure that Montana law applies when coverage is provided under an insurance policy issued in another state that has less consumer friendly law.

Symposium Introduction, Peter N. Swisher

Law Faculty Publications

This Symposium addresses a number of the serious questions and issues involving the insurance law doctrine of reasonable expectations after three decades. We are fortunate to have ten excellent symposium articles analyzing the doctrine of reasonable expectations from various perspectives, written by seven academic lawyers, two prominent insurance law practitioners, and an eminent jurist.

Annual Survey Of Virginia Law: Insurance Law, Terrence L. Graves

University of Richmond Law Review

This article will summarize and discuss case decisions and statutory changes in the field of insurance law that have taken place over the last two years. As in years past, most of the cases involve automobile coverage, particularly uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. Other areas covered by this article include the following: liability insurance, automobile medical payments coverage, insurance regulation, fire insurance, and homeowners insurance.

Rights And Efficiency In American Health Law, Maxwell Gregg Bloche

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

During the 1960s and 1970s, the individual rights revolution that swept through American society remade much of the nation's health law in its image. Sick people acquired the right to be told of the risks and benefits of proposed treatments and then to give thumbs-up or thumbs-down to their doctors' decisions. Successful suits for medical negligence went from rare to commonplace. Elderly and poor Americans achieved statutory rights of access to publicly funded healthcare, and courts burnished these rights with myriad procedural protections. The critically ill and their families won the right to refuse aggressive, life-sustaining treatments. Psychiatric patients acquired …

Due Process, Supreme Court New York County: Ramanadhan V. Wing

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

University Of Richmond Law Review

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Industrial Espionage As Unfair Competition, Robert L. Tucker

Akron Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Insurance Contracts And Judicial Discord Over Whether Liability Insurers Must Defend Insureds’ Allegedly Intentional And Immoral Conduct: A Historical And Empirical Review Of Federal And State Courts’ Declaratory Judgments—1900–1997, Willy E. Rice

Faculty Articles

Each year in America, an estimated $200 billion is spent purchasing third-party liability insurance. Fairly recent findings reveal that although some carriers try to settle third-party claims, an unacceptable number of liability companies simply refuse to settle or defend third-party suits. Each year, thousands of consumers and insurers petition state and federal courts for declaratory relief. The simple question asked in these cases is: do liability insurers have a duty to defend policyholders when third-party complainants only allege that insureds committed immoral or intentional acts?

Plaintiffs’ lawyers, defense counsels, state and federal judges, and state legislators and insurance commissioners should …

Offensive And Defensive Insurance Coverage For Patent Infringement Litigation: Who Will Pay?, Lisa A. Small

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

An Interdisciplinary Critique Of The Reasonable Expectations Doctrine, Jeffrey E. Thomas

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Common Fund Doctrine: Coming Of Age In The Law Of Insurance Subrogation, Johnny Parker

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Evaluating The Case For Social Security Reform: Elderly Poverty, Paternalism And Private Pensions, Maria O'Brien

Faculty Scholarship

This Article considers the many arguments currently being made in favor of Social Security pension reform and evaluates each of them in terms of the principal Congressional goal of the program-the elimination of elderly poverty-as well as more recent goals that have been articulated by subsequent commentators such as a reduction in government paternalism and the maximization of retirement income. The Article begins with a short history of the public pension program in the United States and considers at length the details of the various reform proposals that currently enjoy support. In addition it examines the enormously regressive tax structure …

Reimbursing Insurers’ Defense Costs: Restitution And Mixed Actions, Douglas R. Richmond

San Diego Law Review

The pejorative “Indian giver” describes a person who, having given a gift to another, takes it back or demands its return. This childhood insult arguably has surfaced in the law of liability insurance. A liability insurer that provides its insured with a defense to a lawsuit, but that later seeks to recover from the insured the costs associated with the defense of uncovered claims, might be described by the insured or by an insensitive court as an Indian giver. Having promised to defend its insured even against suits that are “groundless, false or fraudulent," an insurer that later seeks the …

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.

Unmet Expectations: Undue Restriction Of The Reasonable Expectations Approach And The Misleading Mythology Of Judicial Role, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

A complete and open embrace of the pure version of the doctrine as enunciated in Judge Keeton's famous article--which expressly provides for finding coverage consistent with the objectively reasonable expectations of the policyholder even where those expectations are contradicted by apparently clear policy language --is viewed by much of the legal and political mainstream as too inconsistent with the prevailing American paradigm of judicial restraint, strict construction of disputed texts, and minimal government involvement in market activity. Some of this resistance to reasonable expectations is the product of an unrealistic reification of the prevailing American politico-legal philosophy of judicial restraint. …

Unreason In Action: A Case Study In The Wrong Approach To Construing The Liability Insurance Pollution Exclusion, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

For more than twenty-five years, a significant component of the scholarly commentary on insurance law has focused on the so-called “reasonable expectations doctrine” enunciated by then-Professor (now Judge) Robert Keeton in his justly celebrated 1970 article. The reasonable expectations principle made a seemingly sudden emergence with the appearance of Keeton's article and has held particular attraction to academics while simultaneously prompting resistance from elements of the bench and bar, and particularly from the insurance industry. The doctrine's life to date can be described as one of early growth followed by subsequent retreat and dilution, with continuing controversy.

However, despite the …