Insurance Law Commons^™

Employment Practices Liability Insurance And Ex Post Moral Hazard, Joni Hersch, Erin E. Meyers

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Many businesses purchase Employment Practices Liability Insurance (EPLI), a form of insurance that protects them from claims of discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and wrongful termination. But critics of EPLI argue that allowing insurance coverage for employment liability detracts from employment law's goal of deterrence and from notions of justice. We assess the validity of these criticisms by examining the nature of employment law claims and by reviewing characteristics of the current EPLI market. We find that past critiques miss the mark in diagnosing EPLI's major problem.

The EPLI market, for the most part, functions in a way that poses little to …

Climate Changes Property: Disasters, Decommodification, And Retreat, Michael Pappas, Victor B. Flatt

Publications

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Jennifer Taub

Faculty Scholarship

This Foreword highlights the central points of the Articles in Volume 43, Issue 1 of Western New England Law Review. The Article topics include emotional support animals, distribution rights for small beer brewers, fairness in accident insurance coverage, alternative legal education materials, and custody challenges for parents with abusive partners. Each share the identification of a perceived problem with the legal status quo and presents proposed solutions.

Title Insurance: Protecting Property At What Price?, Stewart E. Sterk

Articles

The real property recording system is designed to protect purchasers and mortgagees against defects in title. Navigating that system is beyond the capacity of most laymen; historically, purchasers hired lawyers and other professionals to identify and eliminate title risks. Institutional lenders, however, sought more protection than a lawyer's opinion could provide, leading to the development of title insurance. Title insurance, unlike most other insurance, is focused not on risk spreading but on risk elimination. By examining title before issuing a policy, a title insurer minimizes the likelihood of a successful claim by an insured whose title turns out to be …

New Means Of Financing Tort Lawsuits And Law Firms: Presentation Of Professor Anthony Sebok, Anthony J. Sebok

Articles

The article explores the role of third-party financing in litigation, focusing on its historical development, ethical implications, and modern applications in addressing the challenges of negative value claims in mass torts and consumer litigation. It examines various forms of third-party support, including assignment, maintenance, champerty, and factoring, and evaluates their potential to facilitate access to justice while raising important legal and ethical considerations.

Insuring The 'Uninsurable': Catastrophe Bonds, Pandemics, And Risk Securitization, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

In principle, governments could protect against the potential economic devastation of future pandemics by requiring businesses to insure against pandemic-related risks. In practice, though, insurers do not currently offer pandemic insurance. Although they may well be able to obtain sufficient actuarial data to set pandemic underwriting standards and rate tables, insurers are concerned that they lack sufficient capacity, as an industry, to cover those risks, which are likely to occur worldwide and to be highly correlated. Pandemics therefore are in the class of risks, like war, terrorism, and riots, that are deemed “uninsurable,” at least by private markets. This Article …

Insuring Evolving Technology, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The study of the interaction between law and technology is more critical today than ever before. Advancements in artificial intelligence, information communications, biological and chemical engineering, and space-faring technologies, to name but a few examples, are forcing us to reexamine our traditional understanding of basic concepts in torts and insurance law.

Yet, few insurance professionals and scholars will identify themselves as working in the field of “law-and-technology.” For many of them, technology is “just a fact about the world like any other,” as Ryan Calo once put it, not one that always merits “special care.”

This short paper is an …

Health Insurance And The Undocumented Immigrant, Anja Diercks

Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to perform a comparative analysis on how seven different countries (USA, South Africa, Germany, England, Canada, France and Singapore) organize their healthcare system to cope with the issue of undocumented immigrants and whether or not these systems in place were “fair.” The thesis will also explore the possible ways the United States could change to be more inclusive and fairer in the world of healthcare and health insurance for the undocumented immigrant. A study on what fairness means both in ethical and economical terms is done to suggest a new basis of a fair …

Insurance, Maren R. Cave, Thomas D. Martin, Bradley S. Wolff

Mercer Law Review

During this Survey period, the courts in Georgia returned to the usual abundance of automobile and uninsured motorist (UM) cases, the summaries of which make up most of this annual update. The courts decided three cases involving UM coverage limits that were less than the policies’ liability limits and the claims of insureds that the carriers owed coverage equal to the liability limits. The insurers prevailed in all three cases. In a fourth case, the Georgia Court of Appeals determined that an insured could not sue a tortfeasor in the name of “John Doe,” where the person’s name was known …

Following The Money: The Aca’S Fiscal-Political Economy And Lessons For Future Health Care Reform, William M. Sage, Timothy M. Westmoreland

Faculty Scholarship

It is no exaggeration to say that American health policy is frequently subordinated to budgetary policies and procedures. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was undeniably ambitious, reaching health care services and underlying health as well as health insurance. Yet fiscal politics determined the ACA’s design and guided its implementation, as well as sometimes assisting and sometimes constraining efforts to repeal or replace it. In particular, the ACA’s vulnerability to litigation has been the price its drafters paid in exchange for fiscal-political acceptability. Future health care reformers should consider whether the nation is well served by perpetuating such an artificial relationship …

Evidence Supporting The Value Of Surgical Procedures: Can We Do Better?, Jonathan J. Darrow, Christopher Robertson, Willard S. Kasoff

Faculty Scholarship

There is an acknowledged need for higher-quality evidence to quantify the benefit of surgical procedures, yet not enough has been done to improve the evidence base. This lack of evidence can prevent fully informed decision-making, lead to unnecessary or even harmful treatment, and contribute to wasteful expenditures of scare health care resources. Barriers to evidence generation include not only the long-recognized technical difficulties and ethical challenges of conducting randomized surgical trials, but also legal challenges that limit incentives to conduct surgical research as well as market-based challenges that make it difficult for those funding surgical research to recoup investment costs. …

“Waiving” Goodbye To Medicaid As We Know It: Modern State Attempts To Transform Medicaid Programs Through Section 1115 Waivers, Chandler Gray

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This Note explores recent state efforts to reshape their respective Medicaid programs through Section 1115 waivers. Specifically, this Note looks at states that wish to convert their Medicaid program to a block grant through Section 1115 waivers. Examining the lawfulness of these waivers requires analyzing the language and application of both the Medicaid Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. This Note argues that any use of Section 1115 waivers to implement a block grant program would be a violation of the Medicaid Act and thus unlawful. Further, federal approval of such programs would be deemed arbitrary and capricious. To justify …

Managing The New Political Risks: Populism, Democratic Instability, And The Rise Of Political Risk Insurance In Developed Democracies, James R. Brakebill

Connecticut Insurance Law Journal

Developed democracies in the West are facing a surge of political

risk. Democratic institutions are showing their weaknesses as polarization,

populism, and trade conflicts sweep across the developed world. Firms and

investors with multinational interests have been turning to political risk

insurance to mitigate potential losses due to adverse government action.

Once limited to emerging markets to insure against risks such as civil war

or expropriation, political risk insurance is increasingly being purchased to

protect assets from emerging risks in developed economies. While private

insurers have been able to respond to the increase in demand for coverage,

they are not …

The American Law Institute's Restatement Of The Law, Liability Insurance: Scholarship And Controversy, Lorelie S. Masters, Geoffrey B. Fehling

Connecticut Insurance Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Homeowner's Insurance And Credit Score: A Critical Race Theory Perspective, Robert K. Yass

Connecticut Insurance Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Notpetya, Not Warfare: Rethinking The Insurance War Exclusion In The Context Of International Cyberattacks, Katherine S. Wan

Washington Law Review

When an insurer wants to avoid coverage of a specific type of loss, it must explicitly exclude the loss in its policy. The war exclusion is a typical exclusion found in insurance policies that excuses insurers from covering losses caused by war or warlike actions. Courts interpreting the exclusion have traditionally held that war must consist of hostilities between sovereign nations. Despite the rise of state-sponsored cyberattacks, the United States has been hesitant to officially declare war in response. Even still, insurers argue that their war exclusions should apply to these new cyber losses. Courts are now tasked with reanalyzing …

Underwriting Criteria, Practices, And Tools Of Pet Health Insurance Companies, Kimberly L. Wilson

Connecticut Insurance Law Journal

This article examines the underwriting criteria, practices, and tools of pet insurance companies. While companies that sell pet insurance policies are generally transparent about who their underwriting company is, underwriting rules are not as readily available and require consumers to navigate the System for Electronic Rates and Forms Filing (SERFF) online interface. Because pet "health" insurance is actually a form of property and casualty insurance, the underwriters are, as expected, typically property and casualty companies. This paper explores the current pet health insurance landscape and how pet insurance underwriters incorporate quasi-medical underwriting into their pet insurance policies.

What Is A Protection Gap? Homeowners Insurance As A Case Study, Jay M. Feinman

Connecticut Insurance Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Infected Judgment: Problematic Rush To Conventional Wisdom And Insurance Coverage Denial In A Pandemic, Erik S. Knutsen, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Connecticut Insurance Law Journal

The COVID-19 pandemic created not only a public health crisis but also an

insurance coverage imbroglio, prompting near-immediate business interruption claims by policyholders impacted by government restrictions ordered in response to the pandemic. Insurers and their representatives "presponded" to the looming coverage claims by quickly moving to denigrate arguments for coverage, engaging in a pre-emptive strike that has largely worked to date, inducing too many courts to rush to judgment by declaring-as a matter of law-that policy terms such as "direct physical loss or damage" do not even arguably encompass the business shutdowns

resulting from COVID-19. Our closer examination of …

Racist Robots And The Lack Of Legal Remedies In The Use Of Artificial Intelligence In Healthcare, Tyler Dueno

Connecticut Insurance Law Journal

This article examines the rapidly accelerating use of powerful artificial intelligence to make healthcare decisions. Artificial intelligence promises many benefits: affordable and accessible healthcare; diagnostic accuracy; and efficiently streamlining tasks related to prior authorization procedures. However, the perils involve proxy discrimination-an insidious form of a disparate impact claim-involving biases inadvertently coded into an algorithm disproportionately harming members ofa protected class. As most Americans have employer-provided health insurance governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), this paper argues there are no adequate legal remedies for consumers injured by proxy discrimination. The history of health insurance explains why …