Insurance Law Commons^™

The Dilemma Of Concurrent Coverage: Carriers Insurance Co. V. American Policyholders Insurance Co., Joanne F. Cole

Maine Law Review

Insurance draftsmen responding to consumers' demands for comprehensive automobile liability protection have attempted to create precise, extensive coverage for the insured while at the same time limiting the insurer's liability if possible. One consequence of this effort is that when two or more policies cover the same risk and person and concurrent coverage results, the insurers may attempt to reduce their liability on the grounds that other insurance is available. Insurers achieve this contingent coverage through the device of "other insurance" clauses—a judicially approved means of reducing or avoiding liability if other valid and collectible insurance exists. These clauses originated …

Government-Backed Insurance For Artificial Intelligence Technologies, Renee Henson

Faculty Publications

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an unpredictable technology that has the capacity to both help and harm people. Although insurance plays a key role in compensating for harms in other contexts, AI-produced damages evade traditional principles of risk pricing which limits viable commercial insurance coverage. AI requires modified insurance systems that can compensate diverse and unpredictable losses. Just like AI, at one time nuclear energy was viewed as a new and profitable, yet wholly unpredictable, technology that had the capacity to cause devastating harm. AI poses similar threats to society in certain domains, including, for example, health care (e.g., risk management …

Privatized Medicaid: An Incentivized System Of Constant Denials, Hannah R. Courtney

West Virginia Law Review

The Medicaid Program was created to fill the gap of what private insurance would not do—provide vulnerable populations with meaningful access to quality health care—but now it has been thrown into the pitfalls of private insurance. Over the last two decades, there has been a significant rise in states contracting with private Managed Care Organizations (“MCOs”) to provide services to a percentage of their Medicaid enrollees. MCOs now make decisions each year to approve or deny millions of requests for Medicaid coverage of health care services using prior authorization. Until now, the criticisms and fears surrounding privatized Medicaid have largely …

Insurance Era: Risk, Governance, And The Privatization Of Security In Postwar America: An Essay Review, Katherine Hempstead

Connecticut Insurance Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Big Business As Gun Control, David B. Kopel, George A. Mocsary, Bhav Ninder Singh

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Gun control increasingly bypasses direct legislative enactments by co-opting the commercial marketplace. Financial institutions and insurers often face regulatory pressures, frequently articulated through vague notions of “reputational risk,” to terminate or restrict services for lawful firearms businesses and advocacy groups. The debanking tactic, seen in initiatives such as Operation Choke Point, can deny essential financial products to firearm owners, merchants, and organizations, curtailing the practical exercise of constitutionally protected rights. Simultaneously, government agencies sometimes pursue warrantless data collection from bank records and merchant category codes, building profiles of lawful purchasers and eroding privacy and due-process norms.

Social media platforms compound …

E/Insuring The Ai Age: Empirical Insights Into Artificial Intelligence Liability Policies, Anat Lior

Connecticut Insurance Law Journal

Insurance represents an important but underappreciated part of our lives. Both individuals and corporations gain from purchasing coverage from insurers to manage and hedge their risks. It is a necessary mechanism in modern society to support innovation while ensuring that its unavoidable victims will be compensated. The innovation of emerging technologies alters the existing risk landscape, challenging insurance companies, innovators, and individuals' ability to manage their risks. The current emerging technology of Artificial Intelligence (Al) significantly emphasizes this trend. Insurance companies are grappling with the notion of Al. They are exploring different traditional and novel insurance products that they can …

Like A Good Neighbor, State Courts Are There: The Case For Remanding Covid-19 Business Interruption Actions To State Court, Gabriel L. Johnson

Connecticut Insurance Law Journal

Following the emergence of COVID-19 and resulting civil orders seeking to stop its spread, many businesses filed claims with their insurance providers for “business interruption” coverage, a type of insurance intended to compensate businesses for income lost during a temporary forced closure. When insurance companies roundly denied these claims, many small-business owners filed lawsuits in state courts. Insurance company defendants largely removed these cases to federal courts, and business owner plaintiffs filed to remand back to state court. In one consolidated appeal heard by the Third Circuit, DiAnoia’s Eatery, LLC v. Motorist Mutual Insurance Co., businessowner plaintiffs seeking remand to …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Re-Imagining Tomorrow: A Technology, Innovation Law, And Ethics Symposium On Addictive Technology And Children, Margaret Chon

Seattle University Law Review

In this Foreword, Professor Margaret Chon introduces Seattle University's Technology, Innovation Law, and Ethics (TILE) program, the 2024 TILE Symposium, and Dr. Gaia Bernstein’s Unwired: Gaining Control Over Addictive Technologies.

Keynote Address: The Movement To Protect Kids From Addictive Technologies, Gaia Bernstein

Seattle University Law Review

In this keynote address, I describe my personal journey starting with a school outreach program I created in 2017 to address technology overuse among kids. While I initially advocated for self-help methods, I grew to recognize that the tech industry bore responsibility. This realization led me to write Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies, which focused on collective action to pressure the tech industry to redesign its addictive products.

I then describe the movement to control addictive technologies and protect kids, which has gained momentum since the end of the pandemic. This movement combines grassroots parent activism with legal-political action. …

Moral Panic Or Public Health Crisis? Lessons From Drugs And Gambling For “Addictive” Design, Matthew B. Lawrence, Haomin (Kevin) Yan

Seattle University Law Review

Alcohol, automobiles, guns, lottery, loot boxes, meat, music, opioid painkillers, processed foods, prop bets, slot machines, television, tobacco, violent video games. Over the last century each of these has been subject to concerns—some might even say “moral panics”—from parents and policymakers about avoidable harms to kids and adults. In some cases we look back with the benefit of hindsight and dismiss those concerns as naïve or moralistic. In others we look back at them as justified or as having come too late to check an expanding industry before it did unfathomable harm while growing so powerful that it became all …

Responding To Digital Addiction, Ned Snow

Seattle University Law Review

In Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies, Professor Gaia Bernstein calls our attention to the growing problem of digital addiction. Digital addiction may sound like something out of a science-fiction novel or something that does not raise the same sort of real-life practical concerns as are present in a physical health crisis or an economic decline. But as Bernstein presents the evidence, we learn that the consequences of digital addiction can be just as harmful as a serious disease or a financial depression. Cognitive development disorders, anxiety, emotional depression, social isolation, and other mental health ills can be debilitating—as much …

The Ai Doppelgänger Dilemma: Cloned Voices In The Music Industry, Elizabeth Shields

Seattle University Law Review

With the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI), there has been an influx of “voice clones”—deep-learning algorithms that create synthetic speech to realistically mimic human voices. Celebrities and, in particular, music artists, have been subjected to the proliferation of AI voice clones on social media platforms like TikTok and streaming platforms such as Spotify. Despite music utilizing AI voice clones having amassed much popularity, this technology can be harmful and highly invasive to musicians whose livelihoods often depend on their distinct voices. While legal scholars have attempted to articulate various rights that could protect a person’s voice, individuals are largely …

Let The Sunshine In: Crafting Constitutional Transparency Regulations For Content Moderation, Caitlin Ring Carlson

Seattle University Law Review

In response to public concern about the impact of social media, legislators in some U.S. states have developed laws to regulate the process of content moderation. Many include mandatory transparency and disclosure requirements, some of which courts have already deemed an unconstitutional infringement on social media platforms’ right to free expression. This article explores the parameters for crafting constitutional social media transparency regulations using existing U.S. media policy and insights from recent legal challenges. The resulting analysis identifies content neutral transparency requirements that mandate the disclosure of purely factual, non-controversial information as those most likely to withstand judicial scrutiny. Specifically, …

This Is Not A Game: The Addictive Allure Of Digital Companions, Nizan Geslevich Packin, Karni Chagal-Feferkorn

Seattle University Law Review

Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents have become an inescapable part of modern childhood, reshaping education, leisure activities, entertainment, and social interaction. From AI-powered tutors that adapt to individual learning styles to emotionally responsive chatbots that simulate human companionship, these systems promise unprecedented personalization, cognitive stimulation, and social support. However, these benefits mask significant risks that remain unregulated and inadequately addressed.

Although adults are also susceptible to forming deep emotional bonds with AI companions—often trusting them as if they possessed genuine understanding and empathy—children are particularly vulnerable. Their misplaced trust can more severely distort social development, weaken critical thinking, and foster unhealthy …

Changemaker: Justin Pruett : Juris Doctorate : More Than Words: Insurance Lawyer Justin Pruett L'11 Takes A Different Route Into The Courtroom 2-10-2025, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Read But Not Understood? An Empirical Analysis Of Consumer Comprehension In Homeowners Insurance, Daniel Schwarcz, Brenda J. Cude, Kyle D. Logue, German Marquez Alcala

Law & Economics Working Papers

Modern contract law assumes that consumers meaningfully assent to the standard forms that govern their daily lives. However, this assumption is widely regarded as a legal fiction for two key reasons: first, most consumers do not read standard forms, and second, even those who do often struggle to fully comprehend their terms and implications. While the lack of consumer reading has been well-documented through empirical research, consumers’ ability to comprehend standard form contracts has received surprisingly little attention.

This Article addresses the latter issue by empirically examining whether providing excerpts from the dominant standard form homeowners insurance policy improves consumer …

Through A Glass Darkly: How Securities Disclosures Give A Distorted View Of The Economy, Gerald F. Davis

Seattle University Law Review

Our understanding of the American economy often relies on stylized facts derived from mandatory disclosures by listed corporations. Data vendors like Standard & Poor’s vacuum up 10Ks and proxy statements into databases, and scholars distill these into tentative maps. This may have been adequate for a postwar economy centered on asset-heavy manufacturers, but it is increasingly out of step with an information-based economy. Companies listed on the stock market are fewer in number and less representative than they were, light in tangible assets and people, and heavy on IP. Basic facts such as what industry they are in are increasingly …

The Insurance Solution For Financial Advice Failures, Adam J. Gana, Benjamin P. Edwards

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Solving the retirement savings crisis requires widespread access to reliable financial advice. Yet financial advisers often operate without insurance, collecting fees and commissions from customers and leaving them penniless when substandard advice causes harm. Instituting insurance coverage requirements would protect investors and allow market forces to discipline misconduct. For decades, advocates and regulators have raised awareness about the millions of unpaid arbitration awards each year; an insurance solution would significantly reduce the harm suffered.

This paper aims to create a roadmap to solve the problem. It identifies the problem and maps out the different levers available to policymakers to increase …

Human Masters/Robot Servants: Highly Automated Vehicle Design, Intoxicated Drivers & Vicarious Liability, William H. Widen, Marilyn C. Wolf

Articles

A traditional engineering role is to design a safe product. Safety engineering is an exercise in harm avoidance ex ante. In contrast, liability attribution is an exercise to compensate for loss post hoc — traditionally viewed as a legal matter. We observe that, when a natural person incurs liability for a loss that exceeds insurance coverage, economic ruin can follow. Neither engineering nor law focus on the loss suffered by defendants considering law as a "safety risk." The highly automated vehicle (HAV) design space, however, provides an opportunity to prevent this kind of economic harm from occurring ex ante just …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Corporate Scenarios: Drawing Lessons From History, Madison Condon

Seattle University Law Review

As corporations are increasingly pressed to reveal information about their exposure to climate-related risks, they are often asked to undertake and disclose the outcome of “scenario analysis.” In this exercise, corporations, including financial institutions, examine how their business would fare under different pathways the future may take. One oft-used scenario, for example, is the International Energy Agency’s “Net-Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Energy Sector.” This Essay presents a history of the use of scenarios as a corporate planning tool, particularly in the oil industry, arguing that it is key for understanding our present moment and the role of …

Shareholder Expression In A Time Of Heightened Political Tension, Aaron A. Dhir

Seattle University Law Review

In this article, I provide context for my forthcoming research project on shareholder proposals and racial equity audits. Since the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, progressive shareholder actors have increasingly used the proposal mechanism to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice-related goals. These proposals have frequently gone beyond requesting the usual corporate fare of diversity trainings, intersectionality workshops, affinity groups, etc. Instead, a more ambitious type of proposal asks corporate America to conduct racial equity audits, defined as “an independent, objective and holistic analysis of a company’s policies, practices, products, services and efforts to combat systemic racism …

Corporate Governance Speech, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

The State has always regulated the intra-firm communications that make corporate governance possible, most commonly by mandating disclosures of information by a corporation to its shareholders. Some such laws are labeled “securities regulation,” but securities regulation is a broad category that extends to speech by actors who are outside the corporate enterprise as well. Also, the conventional securities regulation category does not capture all such laws; other examples, including informationforcing mandates, can be found in state corporate law. This Article uses the term “corporate governance speech” to describe the communications among shareholders, directors, and officers through which corporate governance is …

Dark Accounting Matter, Colleen Honigsberg

Seattle University Law Review

Physicists calculate that approximately 85% of the matter in the universe is composed of “dark matter” that “does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation and is therefore difficult to detect.” The S&P 500 currently trades at a price-to-book value of 4.2, suggesting that book value accounts for less than 20% of the S&P 500’s market value. The remaining 80% appears nowhere in these firms’ balance sheets—it is invisible to contemporary accounting techniques and constitutes “dark accounting matter.”

Some “dark accounting matter” is composed of factors commonly described as components of “ESG.” Human capital, for example, is an intangible asset …

The Employees’ Dilemma: Balancing Internal Reporting, Whistleblowing, And Insider Trading Risks, Geeyoung Min

Seattle University Law Review

The Essay examines how recent developments in insider trading regulations and whistleblower reward programs can lead to unintended and counterproductive results of discouraging employees from using internal reporting channels within corporate compliance programs. While the presence of a robust and well-functioning corporate compliance program is a critical factor both in mitigating the level of public enforcement actions against companies and in protecting corporate managers from liability in private litigation, these programs often provide little incentive for employees to report potential misconduct internally.

Corporate compliance programs are designed to promote the upward information flow within the company, which is essential for …

How The Antidiscrimination Law Of Commercial Transactions Really Works, Helen Norton

Seattle University Law Review

A variety of businesses now cite 303 Creative when seeking First Amendment protection for their refusal to serve certain customers based on those customers’ protected class status. How this litigation will play out remains to be seen. But future courts need not, and should not, repeat the 303 Creative Court’s misunderstanding of how the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions actually works.

Part I of this Essay explains the Court’s longstanding understanding of the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions, and then describes the Court’s failure to engage with this precedent in 303 Creative. Part II then identifies the 303 Creative decision’s …

Obamacare For Homeowners Insurance: Fixing America's Broken Insurance Markets In A Time Of Climate Change, Daniel Benjamin Schwarcz

Articles

Over the last decade, homeowners insurance markets nationwide have experienced unprecedented instability due to climate change. These disruptions, which are likely to accelerate in the coming years, risk destabilizing real estate markets, triggering financial instability, and undermining the nation’s resilience to climate change. Despite these massive stakes, federal and state reforms to date have largely failed to result in more accessible and affordable homeowners insurance coverage that promotes climate change resilience. This Article offers a new way forward, arguing that today’s troubled homeowners insurance markets resemble the broken, state health insurance markets that pre-dated the 2010 passage of the Affordable …

Profiteers Of Death, Match Dawson

Faculty Articles

Brazenly operating within the illicit world of stranger-owned life insurance (“STOLI”), unscrupulous investors and colluding life insurance agents unapologetically engage in a calculated dance of fraud and deceit. With the skill of seasoned con artists, these “Profiteers of Death” prey upon the unsuspecting elderly community, strategically targeting senior assisted living facilities by dangling the golden carrot of easy money in exchange for unwittingly selling away their insurability for little more than copper pennies. Standing idle like salivating vultures, the Profiteers of Death make a mockery of legislative attempts to curb the illegitimate secondary market, perfectly exploiting regulatory deficiencies as they …

Green Dividends: A Case Study In Green Dividends And The Conditions For Private Ordering Solutions, Anne M. Tucker

Seattle University Law Review

This Essay introduces a novel private ordering solution to facilitate corporate investments in pro-social and environmental initiatives: Green dividends. Green dividends are an optional increase in shareholder dividends that are returned to the company to be reinvested in environmental initiatives or kept by a shareholder.

Green dividends pose an alternative to the current gridlocked debate that corporations can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, and shouldn’t even try to act in pro-social or environmental ways. Turning the common refrains on their head converts each narrative into an element for a successful private ordering solution: authority, accountability, shareholder buy-in, and government- backed enforcement. With Green …