Mr. Trouble never hangs around,
When he hears this mighty sound,
“Here I come to save the day!”
That means that Mighty Mouse is on the way!
Yes sir, when there is a wrong to right,
Mighty Mouse will join the fight!
On the sea or on the land,
He’s got the situation well in…
Very early on, our firm decided not to get involved in the COVID-19 business interruption coverage wars. Our reasons were simple.
First, we knew that the insurance industry would treat these claims as a threat to their very existence (or at least would say that to judges in an effort to dodge coverage). Therefore, the…
In the 2008 film Wall-E, Earth is a post-apocalyptic wasteland with nothing on it but the abandoned remnants of human society, and a forlorn, trash-compacting robot. The robot’s only living company is a pet cockroach named Hal, which I guess is Pixar’s nod to the popular notion that cockroaches will outlive us all. (Or…
Earlier this month, I woke up to the sound of sirens and the smell of smoke. My neighbors and friends from around the block suffered a catastrophic fire, and lost their home and all of their belongings, escaping with literally the shirts on their back (and their dogs). Fortunately, no one was injured, but now…
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…
Arnold Palmer once described golf as “deceptively simple and endlessly complicated.” That’s a good description for insurance also. (Fortunate for me, since I get paid to figure it out.) Given the rules of construction, ambiguities (even latent ambiguities) in insurance policies are supposed to be construed against the carrier. I’ve therefore always wondered why the…
I was saddened to learn that Judge Ruggero Aldisert, formerly of the Third Circuit, recently passed away. I never had the privilege of appearing before Judge Aldisert, and I never met the man, but I feel indebted to him for writing two excellent books that were published through NITA: “Logic for Lawyers” and “Winning on…
When I was in college, there was an English professor named Frank Kinahan, who taught a class called “The Little Red Schoolhouse.” A lot of my fellow students (not me, of course!) apparently thought that if they could just write their papers in enough of an arcane and convoluted manner, people (including their professors) would…
I once heard a veteran of the complex commercial litigation wars describe the process as follows. “Each side hires an expert,” he said, “and the preponderance of perjury prevails.”
A cynical – if funny and unfortunately too-often-accurate – view. Recognizing that expert witnesses are, in essence, paid advocates, the Supreme Court formulated the Daubert and…
I recently got interviewed by Ed Beeson of the Newark Star-Ledger as part of his article about the looming Superstorm Sandy insurance coverage litigation. The insurance industry has definitely circled the wagons, and the first suits are now being filed. There will be a lot of battles over causation (e.g., wind versus flood), as well…