I’m not sure which is more grimly entertaining: watching old advertisements for cigarettes (see here), or watching old advertisements for asbestos products (see here). If you’re an executive in the front office of a company that acquired an asbestos manufacturer, however, you might fail to appreciate the dark humor. A few years back,
Attorneys' fees
Direct Actions against Insurance Companies
Labor Day has just passed as I write this, and this summer (that went by too quickly) was a busy one for the New Jersey appellate courts, insurance-wise. The New Jersey Supremes, for example, dealt with a question often posed by our clients in construction defect cases: Namely, can a claimant proceed directly against a…
Toughening New Jersey’s bad faith law
If an insurance company wrongfully denies a third-party liability claim, then, under the New Jersey Court Rules (R. 4:42-9(a)(6), to be exact), if the policyholder has to sue to enforce coverage for the claim, the policyholder is entitled to recover its attorneys’ fees. Due to a weird quirk in the Court Rules, however, a…
Recovering attorneys’ fees
Absent a specific law or contractual provision, American courts generally follow the “American Rule,” meaning that each side pays its own legal fees. Seems unfair that when a company buys a liability insurance policy, it still may have to hire lawyers to sue the carrier and secure the paid-for defense of an underlying action. New…