I had a brief but interesting conversation with a couple of colleagues recently. The topic was so-called “no action” clauses in liability insurance policies. “No action” clauses try to create a “get out of jail free” card for the carrier, at least temporarily. A typical one reads: “You agree not to bring any action against

I hesitated to write this blog post, which is intended to be nonpolitical. We’re currently in the middle of an exceedingly nasty election season, and any topic that even remotely touches on politics is likely to lead to online mayhem. But I was intrigued by the confirmation hearings I watched yesterday for President Trump’s Supreme

In the “Cheese Shop” sketch from the old Monty Python comedy series, John Cleese plays a customer trying to buy some cheese from “Ye National Cheese Emporium, purveyor of fine cheese to the gentry (and the poverty-stricken too)”. The cheese shop proprietor, played by Michael Palin, seems to have no cheese in stock, not even

There’s a very true old quote about interpreting insurance policies that I (and other policyholder lawyers) like to cite.  It goes: “Ambiguity and incomprehensibility seem to be the favorite tools of the insurance trade in drafting policies. Most are a virtually impenetrable thicket of incomprehensible verbosity…The miracle of it all is that the English language

I have in my office a copy of a Travelers claims manual from the 1980s. In discussing the duty to defend, the manual says, in part: “Ambiguity…means that the words are capable of being understood in two or more reasonably logical ways. Ambiguity should be resolved in favor of the insured. Prompt decisions must be