Gene Killian

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Insurance company claims personnel tend to view the concept of “ambiguity” as the last refuge of a scoundrel.  That’s because unhappy policyholders often reflexively argue that a particular term in dispute is “ambiguous.” On the other hand, miserly insurance companies often argue that the term is perfectly clear. Neither side usually understands what the term…

In a recent decision in the federal district court here in New Jersey, Judge Irenas wrote:  “Plaintiff Marjorie Brooks alleges that her insurance company paid her too much money after her home was damaged by Hurricane Sandy. The court thus takes judicial notice of the following facts: pigs can fly and hell has frozen over.” …

A lot has been written lately – both by judges and observers – about the so-called “business risk” exclusions and their applicability to construction defect claims.  (We’ve previously discussed them here, for example.)  Some judges have ruled that faulty workmanship can never constitute a covered “occurrence” under a general liability policy.  Lately, though, more…

I confess:  I sometimes wonder whether some claims personnel have ever heard of the “red face” test.  In other words, you should only take a negotiating position if it doesn’t actually cause you to blush.  Otherwise, how could seemingly rational people contend that buying “expanded” coverage means that the policyholder has no coverage?  (And how…

Insurance claims personnel have a natural, probably genetic, aversion to certain topics.  One of them is insurance coverage for “advertising injury.”  So, if your advertising injury claim is in any way unusual, chances are that as a policyholder you’re going to run into trouble with your carrier.

Some brief background:  Commercial general liability policies typically…

There’s a funny (perhaps unintentionally so) website called The Robing Room, on which lawyers rate judges in various categories.  The site is funny mostly because, from reading the reviews, you can generally predict who won and who lost a case before that particular judge.  Take, for example, Judge Joseph F. Bianco of the Eastern District…

Claims-made policies were supposed to simplify things.  In an article a few years back, insurance expert Fred Fisher noted that the idea behind such policies was to provide greater actuarial certainty for insurance companies, by ensuring that there would be no more claim activity following the end of a policy period (eliminating the “incurred…

I’ve been working on reviewing a general contracting agreement for a rebuild following Sandy, and the attendant insurance requirements.  I just came across a very useful 50-state survey on the enforceability and construction of indemnification agreements, which you can access by clicking here.  If you’re involved with this area of the law, I think you’ll find it

I greatly respect judges.  And, I feel sympathy for judges. They have a very difficult job. We hand them enormous caseloads for relatively low pay (most of them could make a lot more money in private practice) and then expect them to become conversant in every legal subject imaginable, from water rights to alimony.  By…

As the Sandy-related insurance disputes develop along the New Jersey coast, we’re seeing what we anticipated:  general liability and homeowners’ carriers are disclaiming coverage on the ground that the damage was caused by flood, and is therefore excluded.  Policyholders, on the other hand, are trying to establish that a good portion of the damage wasn’t…