Gene Killian

Subscribe to Gene Killian's Posts
Contact:Read more about Gene Killian

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…

The great American humorist and writer Ambrose Bierce (1842-circa 1914) published a famous work called “The Devil’s Dictionary,” in which he provided astute (if sardonic) definitions of many common terms in the English language. Bierce defined “insurance” for example, as “An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the…

Back in the 80s and 90s, during the environmental insurance coverage wars, each side (insurance companies and policyholders) frequently accused the other of trying to insert imaginary language into insurance policies after losses had happened. Many lawyers put their kids through college arguing about the meaning of the words “sudden” and “accidental,” for example, in…

In our last post, I talked a bit about the dangers of arbitration clauses in insurance policies.  I wanted to continue to develop that topic. Joseph Stalin supposedly once said: “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”  He was talking about manipulated voting, Soviet-style, not insurance.  But one thing’s for…

According to the American Arbitration Association’s website, “arbitration—the out-of-court resolution of a dispute between parties to a contract, decided by an impartial third party (the arbitrator)—is faster and more cost effective than litigation.”

Yeah…don’t be too sure about that.  Insurance companies are slipping arbitration clauses into more and more policies, and many of these…

In the world of insurance, computers are the new “environmental.”

Let me explain. Back in the 1980s, the insurance industry, recognizing the magnitude of exposure it faced for environmental liabilities, embarked on a public relations campaign to convince courts and policyholders that no coverage existed for environmental problems under comprehensive general liability insurance policies. (The…

Sadly, it’s a scenario I’ve seen far too many times in the past 30 years of doing insurance coverage work. A trusted employee in the bookkeeping or accounting department isn’t properly supervised or audited, and begins siphoning off cash to support gambling debts, a drug habit, or expensive tastes.  Sometimes, the employee starts taking cash…

Math has never been my strong suit. My wife, who has an M.B.A., sometimes shakes her head at my unsuccessful attempts to balance our checkbook. And I still remember sitting in my 10th Grade Algebra class with Ms. Babiak at Watchung Hills Regional High School back in the ‘70s and wishing that I could…