I seriously don’t know why so many judges have seem to have such a difficult time applying insurance law. Don’t tell anyone, or coverage lawyers like me may have to reduce our hourly rates, but the whole body of insurance law really comes down to Four Simple Rules:
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My maternal grandfather, Pasquale Cupito, was a legend. I have far too many stories to list here, but one of them involves a giant garbage can lid that he used as a cooking utensil. See, he could make a mean homemade pizza, but there was never enough to keep everyone satisfied. One day he concluded…
Few things are certain in life. Death. Taxes. The ineptitude of New York Mets management. And also, the fact that if you sue an insurance company in state court, and the carrier has a basis upon which to remove the case to federal court, they’re going to do it. Insurance companies think that federal judges…
When we started our law firm 22 years ago, a colleague gave me some very sage advice (which I guess came from bad experience): Get your accounting straight from day one, and keep it straight. To this day, whenever a fellow professional asks me about going out on his or her own, I give the…
Here’s how a major insurance company (Travelers) describes D&O insurance: “Directors & Officers (D&O) Liability insurance helps cover defense costs and damages (awards and settlements) arising out of wrongful act allegations and lawsuits brought against an organization’s board of directors and/or officers. These types of claims have become increasingly common and directors and officers…
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,…
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…
The other day, I was talking with a lawyer who represented a plaintiff in litigation relating to a failed business transaction. He was lamenting the fact that, if he were to take judgment against the defendants, there wouldn’t be insurance to help satisfy the claim, since, according to him, “no insurance company is ever going…
Earlier this year, I posted about whether a policyholder has a right to independent counsel when a possible conflict of interest appears between the carrier and the policyholder. (You can read that post here.) We’re frequently asked that question, because when insurance companies agree to defend a claim, they often send a reservation of…
Back in the days of the environmental insurance coverage wars, we on the policyholder side argued (eventually successfully in New Jersey) that the word “sudden”, as used in the 1973 version of the pollution exclusion, meant “unexpected” and did not have a temporal connotation. My friends in the defense bar often criticized us for trying…